The Delhi High Court on Friday sought response of the AAP government on a PIL seeking directions to it to upload on its Directorate of Education (DoE) website any approvals granted to private unaided schools to hike their fees.
A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan issued notice to the Delhi government and sought its stand on the plea by an NGO which has contended that as the parents have no idea whether fee hike has been approved by DoE, certain schools have allegedly taken advantage of the situation to charge increased fees from them.
The petition by NGO, Justice for All, filed through advocate Khagesh B Jha, has said that proposals for hike by private unaided schools, which exist on concessional government land, are sent online to DoE and therefore, once it passes an order same should be uploaded on its site for informing the parents.
“In absence of availability of the information parents do not know whether the fee hike proposal is accepted or not accepted and few schools started playing fraud with parents and started collecting increased fee without prior sanction or after rejection of prior sanction proposal,” the petition has alleged.
It has contended that there is no information in the public domain to show what was the last approved fee of any specific school and what was the tuition fee bifurcation for a particular academic year “and as a result schools are exploiting parents”.
“The parents have no source to verify what the school is demanding is directed in the government notification,” the petition has claimed.
It has sought directions to DoE to ensure uploading of orders passed by it regarding acceptance and rejection of proposals for prior sanction before any increase in tuition fee of recognized unaided private schools situated on land allotted by land owing agencies.
