The Supreme Court on Tuesday has sought fresh affidavits from the Union government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Moneylife's managing editor Sucheta Dalal seeking a centralised, searchable database of over ₹1.08 lakh crore in unclaimed financial assets, even as the government missed its own July 2023 deadline for creating such a database, prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi acknowledged the problem publicly in December 2025, and a unified portal remains in the works.
During the hearing, the apex court once again drew attention to India's growing mountain of unclaimed financial assets — estimated at over ₹1.08 lakh crore across bank deposits, insurance policies, mutual funds, shares and unpaid dividends. The matter, heard on Tuesday by a bench of justice Vikram Nath and justice Sandeep Mehta, has been listed for hearing on 5 May 2026.
The hearing on Tuesday offered a revealing window into both the scale of the problem and the institutional reluctance to address it transparently.
Senior counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Ms Dalal, described the PIL as "relatively non-controversial" — prompting the bench to respond, in jest: "Then what is the point of hearing it?" The exchange captured the paradox at the heart of the case: a problem that everyone acknowledges, but that the system has somehow failed to fix for years.
Mr Bhushan explained that three separate government funds currently hold unclaimed financial assets transferred from dormant accounts. The depositor education and awareness fund (DEAF), managed by RBI, receives bank deposits that have been inactive for 10 years. The investor education and protection fund (IEPF), under the Union ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), receives unclaimed dividends, shares, and mutual fund proceeds. The senior citizens welfare fund receives unclaimed small savings.
Together, Mr Bhushan told the Court, these three funds hold more than ₹1 lakh crore and a significant portion of that belongs not to private individuals but to the government itself, from various welfare schemes where beneficiaries were never traced.
The core prayer, the senior counsel explained, is twofold: first, a centralised, searchable database covering bank accounts, insurance policies, post-office funds and other financial assets held by deceased account-holders, so that heirs can find out where their relatives' money is without having to approach each institution separately; and second, a simplified claims process allowing heirs to recover assets by producing a will, giving an indemnity, and advertising rather than going through the expensive and time-consuming process of obtaining probate.
The bench expressed sympathy for the first prayer. "What appeals to us is if a man has got ten bank accounts in ten places and dies intestate, how do his dependants get information?" justice Nath observed.
On the second prayer, the simplified claims process, the Court was more sceptical, calling the proposal 'absolutely preposterous' in the context of concerns about fraudulent claims. The Court noted, with some prescience, that opening such data could 'give rise to another set of fraudsters who will start filing claims', invoking the Bollywood comedy Housefull 4 as a metaphor for the chaos that might ensue.
Additional solicitor general (ASG) N Venkataraman, appearing for the Union government, acknowledged the problem but raised concerns about making such data publicly accessible, citing privacy, access, and potential misuse. He argued that a carefully designed policy framework is needed to balance transparency with safeguards.
Counsel for RBI pointed to existing mechanisms: banks now require nominees to be named, know-your-customer (KYC) must be done annually, a central KYC system exists and can be linked to Aadhaar and procedures under the Indian Succession Act exist for cases where no nominee is named.
The Court acknowledged these points but directed both the government and RBI to file updated affidavits, noting that the existing mechanisms had clearly not been sufficient, given that ₹1.08 lakh crore remained unclaimed.
The most pointed moment of the hearing came from Mr Bhushan's reminder that this was not a new issue. "They had said earlier in their affidavit that a central database will be created by July 2023. Today we are 2.5 years down the line of that deadline," he told the court.
That missed deadline sits at the heart of the PIL's continued relevance. The government committed, in a sworn affidavit before the Supreme Court, to creating a centralised database by a specific date. That date passed more than two and a half years ago. The database does not exist. No explanation for the delay has been offered on affidavit. The Court has now asked for fresh affidavits which will need to address not just the current state of affairs but why a Court-acknowledged commitment was not honoured.
The irony of the government's resistance to a centralised public database is sharpened by the fact that PM Modi himself publicly acknowledged the scale of the problem as recently as December 2025. Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, PM Modi says that nearly ₹1.04 lakh crore remained unclaimed across banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, and dividend accounts, and that the government was working to return these funds to their rightful owners.
The PM's breakdown of the unclaimed amount was specific: around ₹78,000 crore in bank accounts, ₹14,000 crore with insurance companies, ₹3,000 crore with mutual funds, and ₹9,000 crore in unpaid dividends. "This money belongs to poor and middle-class families," Mr Modi says, framing the campaign to recover these funds as a reflection of renewed trust between citizens and the state. (Read:
Nearly ₹1.04 Lakh Crore Unclaimed Money in Banks, Insurance Companies and Mutual Funds: PM Modi)
Special outreach camps have been organised across about 500 districts, and the government told the Rajya Sabha that Indian banks had returned ₹10,297 crore to rightful owners across more than 3.3mn (million) dormant accounts between April 2022 and November 2025. State Bank of India alone accounted for ₹3,868 crore repaid across more than 1.6mn accounts.
Yet, as of 31 March 2025, public sector banks (PSBs) had already transferred over ₹58,000 crore to the DEAF — led by SBI with ₹19,330 crore and Canara Bank with ₹6,278 crore. Private banks contributed an additional ₹9,000 crore, with ICICI Bank transferring ₹2,063 crore and HDFC Bank ₹1,610 crore. The gap between what has been transferred into the fund and what has been returned to claimants — ₹10,297 crore returned against Rs58,000 crore transferred from public sector banks alone — underlines how far the recovery effort has to go.
The Moneylife Foundation's Role
The PIL filed by Sucheta Dalal, founder-trustee of Moneylife Foundation and one of India's most respected financial journalists, did not emerge in a vacuum. Moneylife Foundation has spent years building the evidentiary and advocacy foundation that underpins it. In 2022, Ms Dalal filed the PIL demanding greater transparency and a centralised mechanism — a filing that directly prompted the RBI to launch the UDGAM (Unclaimed Deposits — Gateway to Access Information) portal for bank deposits.
Through its report,
'Challenges in Transmission of Assets to Nominees and Legal Heirs', Moneylife Foundation has consistently documented how banks flout their own RBI obligations — failing to publish lists of unclaimed accounts, demanding excessive documentation, and delaying legitimate claims in ways that disproportionately harm senior citizens and legal heirs.
Moneylife has also reported that over ₹2 lakh crore was lying in inoperative bank accounts on the verge of becoming unclaimed as of August 2024, and that banks had transferred ₹1.44 lakh crore to the DEAF fund over five years while refunding only ₹5,729 crore to claimants — a recovery rate of under 4%.
In October 2025, the Supreme Court issued notice in a separate PIL filed by Delhi-based activist Aakash Goel, seeking a comprehensive legal framework to track and return over ₹3.5 lakh crore in unclaimed financial assets — a figure that encompasses not just the three government funds but the broader universe of dormant assets across all financial sectors.
The Fragmented System and the Unified Portal
At present, a citizen trying to recover a deceased relative's financial assets must navigate at least five separate systems: RBI's UDGAM portal for bank deposits; SEBI's MITRA platform for securities and mutual funds; IRDAI's Bima Bharosa for insurance; the ministry of corporate affairs' IEPF portal for shares and dividends; and EPFO systems for provident fund claims. Each has different documentation requirements, timelines, and processes.
In November 2025, M Nagaraju, secretary of the department of financial services (DFS), said the ministry was collaborating with RBI to create a single consolidated platform that would bring all of these together in one searchable interface — a one-stop solution coordinated by RBI and covering information from all financial sector regulators. The portal launch was described as expected 'shortly'. It has not yet launched.
The government also ran a three-month nationwide awareness initiative — Aapki Poonji Aapka Adhikar (Your Money, Your Right) — from October through December 2025, through which ₹1,887 crore was returned to legitimate claimants. Against a total unclaimed pool of ₹1.08 lakh crore, that represents less than 2% — a number that, as Mr Nagaraju himself acknowledged, reflects only the early stage of awareness-building.
The Supreme Court has given the government and RBI four weeks to file updated affidavits. When the matter returns on 5 May 2026, the court will need to decide whether the existing patchwork of portals, outreach camps, and promised but unbuilt unified databases is adequate—or whether judicial intervention is needed to compel a more systematic and transparent solution.
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