Heads of 11 public sector banks will today appear before a parliamentary standing committee on finance and apprise it about the challenges faced by them in terms of bad loans and increasing fraud cases. Top officials of IDBI Bank, UCO Bank, Central Bank of India, Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Dena Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Bank of Maharashtra, United Bank of India, Corporation Bank and Allahabad Bank will make presentations before the panel and respond to its queries. Headed by senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, the parliamentary standing committee on finance is looking into issues like non-performing assets, stressed assets in bank, challenges and the way forward for financial institutions in the country. The banking sector is struggling with rising non-performing assets which touched Rs 8.99 lakh crore in December 2017. Of the total NPAs, the public sector banks alone accounted for Rs 7.77 lakh crore. The rising number of banking frauds has also become a cause for deep public concern. The number of frauds reported by banks increased from 4,693 in 2015-16 to 5,904 in 2017-18. The fraud amount at end-March 2018 was Rs 32,361.27 crore, up from Rs 18,698.8 crore at the end of 2015-16.