Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said there are 86 thousand 9 hundred 22 branches of the scheduled commercial banks in rural and semi-urban areas of the country as on 31 March 2017.<br/><br/>Replying to supplementaries in the Lok Sabha today Mr.Jaitley said in addition to the number, 1 lakh 14 thousand business correspondents of the banks are deployed in rural areas for providing banking services in rural and semi-urban areas.<br/><br/>Mr Jaitley said scheduled commercial banks have opened 47.9 crore accounts in rural and semi-urban areas till end of March 2017 to enable access to banking facilities.