Bhubaneswar: As many as 753 villages in Odisha have been declared as the saksham gram - the highest number in the country compared to other states, as each and every household of these villages have accounts in Indian Post Payments Bank (IPPB- A government-owned paperless bank), said Chief Post Master General of Odisha circle, Santosh Kumar Kamila.
"A village is declared as saksham gram when all its households have at least one account in IPPB," he said adding Odisha postal circle received the national award in September for the achievement.
Postal Department had given a target of making of 66 villages saksham gram last year, but we have achieved 753 - the highest in the country, he said. Of these 73 villages are in Berhampur postal division.
The IPPB was launched in the state from September 1 last year. Since then, as many as 3,37,296 accounts have been opened by the end of September this year in this bank, while the total transaction was around Rs 9.41-crore, sources said.
As IPPB has been gaining good response from the public, basically youths, the CPMG said they would try to make more saksham gram in the state in the coming days.
He said the department was given a target to make 3,000 more villages as saksham gram in the state this year. "We are trying to achieve the target this year also," Kamila added.
IPPB has set up 33 branches, covering all the districts in the state. It has enabled over 7000 banking access points and equipped several doorstep banking service providers with micro-ATM devices (smartphone and biometric device) to provide a full suite of banking services, including cash deposits, withdrawal, account opening, money transfers, bill payments and DBT distribution at the customer's doorstep, he said.