High Court returns parents’ petition against fee hike

NOIDA: The Allahabad high court on Thursday returned a petition filed by a group of parents seeking directions to the central and state governments to formulate guidelines for regulation of school fee hike. While returning the petition, the court, however, granted the parents the liberty to file a fresh one.

The petition, filed in 2009 by Gautam Budh Nagar District Students' Guardians Association (DSGA) through its secretary Anup Khanna, had sought suitable directions from the court to the respondents, including the Union government, CBSE, ICSE, and the UP government who have been made parties to the case.

Khanna told TOI that since the petition has been returned and not rejected, he will file it afresh making the private schools a party to the case.

"It was an old petition which made only the CBSE, ICSE, UP government and the Union government as respondents. However, we will now make the private schools a party to it so that the court can issue suitable directions to these schools.

"Moreover, the court also noted that in Modern School versus the Union of India case of 2004, the Supreme Court had already directed the state governments to set up a committee headed by a retired high court judge to be nominated by the Chief Justice of that state to approve the fee structure or to propose some other fee which could be charged by the institute," Khanna said.

"However, that ruling could not be implemented. We filed it at that time when most of the schools were raising the fee arbitrarily on the pretext of the sixth pay commission. Now they have taken the pretext of seventh pay commission. Eight years have passed but the issue remains the same. However, we have some hope now that the court has taken cognisance of the matter," he added.

The petitioner requested the court to issue an order directing the respondents to ensure that no unaided recognised private school is allowed to increase the fee and other charges without first examining the financial records of the school.

"When a parent admits his/ her child to a school, he thinks about affordability of the fee. A parent is unaware that the school will hike the fee in a few years. So, while the salaries are hardly being raised, the school fee goes up every year," Khanna added.

The petition has been filed on grounds that recognised unaided private schools are indulging in large-scale commercialisation of education which is "against the public interest".

"It's pertinent to mention that due to huge profit accumulation, the schools are transferring huge amounts to other schools of the same society," reads the petition.