Cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines owed over Rs 5,600 crore to public sector banks as on February this year, the government has said.

The consortium of 13 PSU banks, including State Bank of India (SBI, have an exposure of Rs 5,608.07 crore to Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) as on February 2012, Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena said in a written reply in Lok Sabha last Friday.

Replying to a query on whether SBI has any proposal to extend a financial lifeline to Kingfisher Airlines, Meena said," State Bank of India, leader of the consortium of lenders, has informed that no such lifeline has been extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd by them during the current financial year."

SBI alone has an exposure of Rs 1,408.45 crore to KFA. The airline, which has a debt of Rs 7,000 crore and an accumulated loss of over Rs 6,000 crore, has been operating only 16 of its 64 aircrafts since last month. It has quit Kolkata and Hyderabad routes completely.

The State Bank of India (SBI) is going for mammoth recruitment in 2012. The largest bank has announced to recruit as many as 8500 assistant (clerk) vacancies this year. For this massive recruitment, the SBI has invited online applications in its latest drive.

The SBI-North East has also also invited applications for its project-2012. The notification for this was published in the last week of December 2011.

To facilitate the interested candidates, the SBI has also started a blog named sbirecruitment2012.blogspot.in

Since the SBI holds all-India examination for its recruitment, a large number of candidates appear in the test.

It may be noted that in year 2009, the MNS had issued threats to disrupt the SBI examination organised in the Maharashtra, as large number of candidates from others states were participating in the examination.

The Rajasthan High Court has issued show cause notice to the Rajasthan Public Service Commission and the state authorities for not implementing the news scheme in the upcoming state civil service examinations as being done by the UPSC and other public service commissions of several states.

Taking cognizance of a petition filed by six candidates of the RAS examination wherein it was said many states including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, UP and Himachal Pradesh among others have done away with the old system of examination, Justice M N Bhandari issued the notice to the state authorities.

Madan Mohan Meena, counsel for petitioners, said, "In 2011, UPSC and many states have replaced the several choices of subjects available in prelims as also in mains examinations with two compulsory papers of GK and General Aptitude in prelims and certain compulsory papers in mains exam. Despite having taken a cabinet decision, the state government is conducting the RAS-2012 exam with old scheme."

Meena highlighted that the government order dated May 18, 2011 to do away with the multiple subject scheme was taken in order to avoid scaling and uneven marks obtained by candidates appearing from different subject combinations, resulting in multiple litigations.