In other words, investors from these towns and cities have gone out of their concerned city or town to open their accounts with a depository participant (DP).

In a bid to tap this latent demand from retail investors, the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) has convened two separate meetings with bank DPs and broker DPs on August 7 and 8 to work out a strategy to achieve the target of 1 lakh client accounts by the end of the year.

NSDL had last week crossed the 50,000 accounts mark, ahead of the target date of August 15 set by Sebi.

According to depository sources, 61 DPs who are operational with NSDL are currently offering their services from a total of 101 cities and towns. But the investors who have opened their accounts with NSDL are spread across 563 cities and towns.

"Thisproves that investors are willing to go that extra mile to enter the depository mode. They would only do this if they were convinced of the benefits of the system. DPs have been servicing these investors through the postal system," said a depository source.

"This also destroys the myth that the depository has not spread across the country," the source added.

Depository participant sources said that the meetings later this week could see broker DPs make a strong pitch for mandatory demat trading for all investors, an issue which is currently being debated within Sebi.

They are also expected to call for bringing in rolling settlement in the physical segment and thereby bring it on a par with the demat segment. The low volumes in the demat segment are being attributed to the disparity in the settlement systems between the two segments.

A statement issued by NSDL on Monday revealed that the total number of accounts opened with it now stand at 51,492. Of these, 47,586 accounts have been opened by retailinvestors, 648 by FIIs, 335 by NRIs, 2,499 by corporates and 424 by institutions like banks, financial institutions and mutual funds.

The region-wise break-up reveals that the West leads with 22,737 accounts, followed by South with 18,000 accounts, North with 6,733 accounts and the eastern region with 3,873 accounts.

Among the states, Kerala with 3,694 accounts from 154 different towns and cities tops the list in terms of number of locations from where accounts have been opened. In terms of number of accounts, Maharashtra heads the list with 16,298 accounts but from only 20 cities and towns.

Accounts have also been opened from 35 cities abroad. Within India, accounts have been opened from towns like Jorhat, Silchar and Tinsukia in Assam, Gangtok in Sikkim and Jammu and Srinagar in J&K.

In the last five months alone more than 40,000 accounts have been opened with over 10,000 accounts having been opened in July.