A local court has issued a notice to St Joseph Senior Secondary School, Sector 44, in Chandigarh, over a civil suit, moved by nine parents who alleged that the fee hiked by the authorities for session 2018-19 was illegal. The court has sought reply on May 4.
The application pleads to restrain the school and their representatives from charging annual fee, other miscellaneous fee and funds under any heads arbitrarily, which are not prescribed by the director of school education, Chandigarh.
The application further mentions that the fee structure for the academic session 2017-18 had already been challenged by the applicants in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) in April 2017, which restrained the school from effecting any revision over the previous year’s during the pendency of the suit. The school was given liberty to formulate a revised fee structure for the academic session 2017-18 in consultation with parents.
But, the school, in violation of CBSE Affiliation Bye Laws, allegedly attempted to cleverly reformulate the fee structure just to get out of the rigours of the order of the CJM. The parents even requested the school to share the relevant financial documents, on the basis of which they could provide meaningful consultation about revising the fee structure. However, the school bluntly refused to provide the requested information to the parents and their request emails were ignored, stated the application. The school then filed an application for dismissing the previous petition against the fee hike of 2017-18 session, but it was dismissed by court on March 7, 2018.
Advocate Vivek Mohan Sharma, counsel for the parents, stated that now the school is pressurising and harassing the minor children of the applicants by sending reminders over mobile phone and compelling them to pay entire arrears of the pending fee for the session 2017-18. “It has also warned the applicants that in case the arrears are not cleared within 10 days, action will be initiated against them and their children,” said Sharma.
“When the court has stayed the fee hike, then how can it demand the previous year’s arrears. The fee hike now by the school is illegal. At present application of nine parents have been filed in the court, while multiple others are yet to be filed in coming days,” said Advocate Sharma.
When tried contacting the authorities of St Joseph Senior Secondary School through phone calls and messages, Chandigarh Newsline received no reply.