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Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court today empowered the Government to check private schools in Delhi from charging excessive fees. As a corollary, it directed all those schools to file their accounts every year to director, education.
The curb on excessive school fee imposed today by a three-judge bench with a 2:1 majority flies in the face of an 11-judge bench verdict of 2002 which recommended ‘‘maximum autonomy’’ to private schools in all aspects, including the fees to be charged.
The 2002 judgment in the TMA Pai case observed that if the Government was allowed to ‘‘curtail the income of such schools,’’ it would ‘‘disable those schools from affording the best facilities because of a lack of funds.’’
Though the judgment delivered today is by a much smaller bench, it will hold the field because the 2002 case was actually about higher education and all references to schools in that verdict are obiter dicta which are not binding.
In another significant aspect of today’s judgment, the apex court mandated that private schools in Delhi would have to set aside some seats for children from poor families and charge them less fees.
The three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice V N Khare ruled that those schools would have to admit poor children as well to comply with one of the conditions on which they had been allotted land at concessional rates by the Government. Besides authorising the Government to check private schools in Delhi from charging excessive fees, the majority verdict delivered by Justice S H Kapadia for himself and Justice Khare directed those schools to submit to the director, education, their annual financial accounts giving details of the total fees collected from the students, the profit, the expenditure on various heads including salary and the surplus funds.
Quoting the Delhi School Education Act, Justice Kapadia said that in the fixation of fee structure several components have to be taken into account and capital expenditure could be made by the schools only from their surplus funds. In a bid to check commercialisation of education, Justice Kapadia also said that money generated by one school cannot be transferred to the parent society administering the school. Thus, the majority verdict dismissed the petitions filed by almost all public schools in Delhi challenging a Delhi High Court order asking the Government to intervene in cases of excess charging of fees by them.
But the dissenting judgment delivered by Justice S B Sinha said that it was open for the schools to maintain their account the way they deemed fit. They could also transfer funds, Sinha said, to the parent society and use the same for establishment of new schools as spread of education was the need of the hour.
Though he differed with the majority verdict’s attempt to put in clauses that were not there in the education Act, Sinha agreed that schools must comply with the conditions laid down at the time of allotment of land at concessional rates by the government.
The high court in its October 1998 judgment had provided a methodology for fixing of fees in which consultation with the representatives of the parents was mandatory.
However, it had said that if thereafter the government found the fees to be excessive, it could intervene in the matter and the schools could approach a statutory committee to redress their grievances.
