One is not allowed to open more than one Public Provident Fund (PPF) account in his or her name. One can open a PPF account in a bank or at a post office, but only one account can be held in one’s own name. If there is more than one PPF account, one of them has to be closed.
The government has recently released rules and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for dealing with cases of amalgamation of PPF accounts. Whenever any depositor has opened more than one PPF account, the second and subsequent accounts opened are treated as irregular, as an individual can open only one single account under the PPF Scheme.
It is to be noted that if there is any PPF loan account, it should be closed before the amalgamation of accounts is done. That means if there is any outstanding loan in any of the PPF account to be merged, the depositor shall be requested to repay the entire outstanding loan amount along with the interest.
The Department of Post has come up with standard operating procedure for post offices for dealing with amalgamation request from PPF account holders after the receipt of the concurrence of Ministry of Finance.
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Amalgamation of more than one PPF accounts – Standard Operating Procedure:
-In cases where deposits made in both the PPF accounts taken together are within in the prescribed ceiling, as applicable to the account from time to time, the account holder will be given an option to retain the account of his choice.
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The PPF accounts in the same operating agency could easily be amalgamated at the level of operating agency by adopting the procedure of transfer of the PPF account. But amalgamation of PPF accounts in different operating agency requires interaction between both the operating agencies.
In such cases, the depositor will submit the request for amalgamation to the accounts office (Post Office or Bank) where he intends to retain the account, along with photocopy of the passbook / statement of account. Thereafter, the accounts office will forward the case to other accounts office (where the account stands which is to be merged) and request to verify/send the details of annual subscriptions of all the financial years.
The accounts office will then work out the annual subscriptions deposited by the account holder in all the PPF accounts keeping in view the prescribed deposit ceiling under PPF scheme declared/ decided by the government from time to time. On confirmation subscriptions do not breach prescribed deposits ceiling of any of the financial year, the accounts office will request the other accounts office to close the account and transfer the balances in the account keeping in view the relevant provision of the PPF Scheme.
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The date of opening of the retained account shall be deemed as the actual opening of the account for the calculation of maturity and other purposes. Where the deposits made in both the accounts taken together are in excess of the prescribed deposit ceiling, applicable from time to time, the excess amount breaching the limit will be refunded to the subscriber from the account to be amalgamated without any interest.
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