The ‘Fee Review Committee’ constituted by the Delhi High Court has stated that out of the 785 private unaided schools indicted by it, 602 private schools in the national Capital have been asked to refund the fees to the parents with nine per cent interest.
As per the status report of the committee constituted to examine the justifiability of fee hike effected by the un-aided recognised schools across the city, only ‘five’ schools have refunded the excess fees amounting to Rs 28.37 lakh to the parents out of the outstanding amount of a whopping over Rs 750 crore.
In pursuance of 2009 order issued by the Delhi Directorate of Education (DoE), a school fee review committee was formed in the year 2011 by the Delhi High Court to consider the accounts and finances of the school in details as substantial complaints were received regarding the excessive and non- permissible enhancement of fees. For which the committee has recommended the refund of such excess fee or development fee with interest of nine percent per annum to the parents.
As per the report, the committee submitted by the committee, “Out of the 1,216 private schools, 785 schools have been indicted for charging additional fee. Out of these 602 school have been asked to refund the fees with nine per cent. Further there were many schools which gave reasons that they hiked the fees to implement the 6th pay commission but during investigation, it has been found that the schools did not had any credible evidence to show on such implementation”.
“Out of the 602 cases, 254 schools were found to have charged fee in excess of its requirement for implementation of the recommendations of 6th pay commission, considering the funds already available with them before effecting the fee hike or were found to have charged development fee without fulfilling the preconditions laid down by the court,” read the status report.
The aggregate amount of such refunds recommended by the committee is about Rs 17,788.92 lakh.
Besides, 348 such schools are there which were found have increased fee but neither it admitted to implement the recommendations of 6th pay commission nor provided any such implementation.
Observing this, the committee asked to refund the entire fee hike with interest of 10 percent over the fee of the fee immediately. But none of the schools has furnished the amount to the parents.
There were around 183 schools which claimed that they had not increased the fee but the fee and salary records and books of accounts produced by them were found to be unreliable, the committee found.
The committee further stated that many schools has also not produced the electronic accounts on established and popular software and rather produced voluminous printed accounts, perusal of which already taken considerable time in deciding such cases.
The schools review committee also requested the High court to extend the term of the committee for nine months or beyond it for further investigation. The last date of the end of the term of the committee is December 31.
“The Directorate of education is responsible for the refund of the fees to the parents”, said Ashok Agarwal, Advocate appearing for the parents body.
