Banks in the state are worried a large number of education loans disbursed without collateral security are piling up as non-performing assets (NPAs) or dud loans.

In all, 3.3 lakh persons owe a whopping Rs 6,729.25 crore to various banks in the state on account of education loans.

Loan dues are mounting to such a level that the non-performing asset portion disbursed by all banks in the state touched Rs. 281.64 crore, involving 15,137 loanees, as on September 2011.

SBT alone has a total outstanding of Rs 2,265 crore towards education loans and NPA in the sector is Rs. 57.72 crore. Correspondingly, all banks under the State Bank group have Rs. 2,932 crore outstanding and Rs 66 crore as NPA.

For all nationalized banks in the state, the outstanding is Rs 2,893 crore and NPA Rs. 152 crore; and for private banks, they are Rs. 428 crore and Rs 31 crore respectively.

Loans have been availed by a cross-section of the society but the worst hit are parents of girls —girls who took the loans and got married, leaving the burden of repayments with the family.

For instance, Sundaresan Nair, 62, a retired government employee, has been forced to take up a clerical job with a private firm despite ill health.

He has to pay back the loan he had taken to send his daughter for engineering. “How can I ask my daughter to pay the loan,” asks Sundaresan who owes nearly Rs 2 lakh to the bank.

“It might be embarrassing to her to raise this issue with her husband and family. After all, it is the responsibility of the parents to educate their children,” he says.

“In case we refuse to give education loans to anyone owing to low repayment capacity, political parties cry hoarse over it. But why are the political parties not initiating steps to get the dues back to us,” asks a senior officer with SBT.

SBT chief manager Raj Kumar told DC that officers would be under pressure to disburse education loans and they faced the music for throwing caution to winds. “We are struggling hard to recover loans”, he said.