Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on Wednesday directed the State Education Department not to take any coercive action against Narayana Vidyalayam School until further orders.
The department on December 15, issued notice to Narayana management to refund excess fees of over Rs7 crore charged by it illegally from the parents over the years.
Quoting parents, TOI in a series of reports had exposed how the private schools, including Narayana, were allegedly forcing the parents to pay full fees despite clear instructions from the Maharashtra government of reducing fees due to Covid-19 pandemic.
A division bench comprising justices Sunil Shukre and Avinash Gharote clubbed the Narayana school’s petition along with earlier ones by the Bhavan’s Group comprising six schools, where similar interim directives of ‘no coercive action’ against their respective managements were issued.
The petition (No 58/2021) was filed by Narayana Education Society through administrator and authorized signatory Roshan Dhore and others. Senior counsel Sunil Manohar and Wiliam Mathew pleaded for the petitioner.
The Bhavan’s group had challenged Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fees) Rules, 2016, where powers of school management to fix the fees were now transferred to the executive committee of Parents Teachers Association (PTA), which it claimed as “not workable”.
In another plea, the same group challenged the deputy director of education’s communication to its school to refund excess fees charged from the students in four years from 2014-15 to 2018-19.
After Narayana management refused requests to reduce the fees and also stopped children’s online classes for a brief period for default, the aggrieved parents lodged a complaint with the Education Department and also met with speaker Nana Patole and minister for state of school education Bachchu Kadu with their grievances.
The department officials then constituted teams to conduct an audit of private school’s accounts where they had detected excess amounts charged from the students and subsequently asked their management to refund that amount.
Kadu in a press meet had even claimed that the city’s private schools had collectively charged over Rs100 crore excess fees from the students flouting rules stipulated under various laws.