Suggest measures to curb menace: HC to counsels
The High Court at Hyderabad on Monday took serious view of private schools charging exorbitant amounts of money as “one-time fee” and pointed out that “education has today unfortunately become a business.”
Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad on Monday took serious view of private schools charging exorbitant amounts of money as “one-time fee” and pointed out that “education has today unfortunately become a business.”
Hearing a Public Interest Litigation petition filed by Hyderabad Schools Parents Association, the division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice A V Sesha Sai urged upon counsels representing both parties and the government to come up with ideas to curb this menace of schools collecting exorbitant fee.
Telangana State Additional Advocate General J Ramachandra Rao too agreed with the observation made by the bench and added that unfortunately even liquor contractors were entering into the field of education for the purpose of business.
The petitioner provided a list of over 162 private unaided schools in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and said they were illegally collecting “one-time fee” many times the maximum limits stipulated in G.O. MS No. 91 dated August 6,2009. The maximum limit was Rs 6,500. But the fee being collected went up to Rs 6 lakh under this head, the petitioner said.
Special government pleader A Sanjeev Kumar informed the Bench that the government had done preliminary investigation into this affair in the schools mentioned by the petitioner and found that the fee being collected under this head ranged from Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh. He said the government would bring on record all these details at the next hearing of the case on next Monday.
Counsel for petitioner Kalpana Ekbote argued that “one-time fee” was nothing but capitation fee in another form. There was absolutely no regulatory framework for putting these institutions under watch and check such exorbitant collection of fee. She also sought action against private unaided schools in using the names such as lIT Olympiad/ Concept/ e-Techno/ e-shastra, etc.
Counsels for respondent schools, Hyderabad Public School, Oakridge International School, Rockwell International School, etc. submitted their arguments as to how such high fee was justified as their schools were offering facilities and education that was much superior in quality.
When it was pointed out by senior counsel L Ravichander that the government was shutting down over 4,000 government schools, the bench suggested that the private schools must come forward to run these schools with fee being regulated by the government. The bench told the counsels to come up with good suggestions to deal with this problem.
