What is the Five Star Villages Scheme of Indian Postal Services?

 

Indian postal services have started a scheme known as Five Star Villages. This will mainly help public awareness in remote villages and reach postal products and services. In particular, all postal products and services will be available and marketed and promoted at the village level under this scheme. This scheme ensures universal coverage of major postal services schemes in rural areas of the country.

 

Five Star Villages Scheme Features

 

Under the Five Star Village scheme, all postal products and services are being made available and marketed and promoted at the village level. To meet all the post office related needs of the rural public, the branch offices will act as a stop-shop. Its three components are product and service availability, product and service promotion and product and service marketing.

 

The services covered under this the scheme has been:

 

1. Savings Bank accounts, Recurrent Deposit Accounts, National Saving Certificate / Kisan Vikas Patra certificates.

 

2. Sukanya Samriddhi Account / PPF Account

 

3. Funded post office savings account linked to India postal payment bank accounts

 

4. Postal Life Insurance Policy and Rural Postal Life Insurance Policy

 

5. Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Samriddhi Yojana Account / Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana Account

 

How will the rating system be decided for the village?

 

From the above list, if any village gets universal coverage for any four schemes, then that village gets four-star status. If any village completes three schemes, then that village will get three-star status etc. Under this, five Star Villages scheme, the entire Maharashtra state is going to be covered. To begin, two rural districts/areas will be identified for each region, Akola and Washim in Nagpur region, Parbhani and Hingoli in the Aurangabad region, Solapur and Pandharpur in the Pune region, Malegaon and Palghar in the Navi Mumbai region and Kolhapur and Sangli in the Goa region. During the current financial year 2020-2021, a total of 50 villages in each district will be covered. Regional Postal offices will identify the villages to be covered.