Private unaided schools on govt land don’t always need govt nod for fees hikes: Delhi HC

Delhi HC has ruled that private unaided schools on govt land only require Department of Education’s approval for fees hikes if it’s an explicit condition for the transaction.

Delhi High Court | Twitter: @ANI

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has ruled that private unaided schools set up on government land can hike fees without the permission of the Department of Education (DoE), but riders apply. The schools can only do so if they have been allotted land without any clause requiring such prior permission from the Delhi DoE, the court said Wednesday. 

Justice C. Hari Shankar also ruled that the DoE can only intervene if it finds that “in the light of the existing financial position of the school, the proposed increase in fee would result in profiteering, and, thereby, in commercialisation of education, and not otherwise”.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Ramjas School, RK Puram, challenging a July 2017 DoE order rejecting its proposal to increase the fees for the academic year 2016-17. 

The DoE had said at the time that the surplus available with the school was sufficient to meet its expenses and it didn’t need to increase the fees. It had then asked Ramjas School to refund or adjust the hiked fee in case parents had already been charged. 

The court, however, said the DoE had exceeded its jurisdiction, which is limited to ensuring education is not commercialised. The 2017 order, it added, did not conclude the school had indulged in commercialising education. 

The court highlighted the autonomy of the school in deciding the fees to be charged, and observed, “The quantum of fee to be charged is an element of its administrative functioning, over which the autonomy of the unaided educational institution, which receives no funds from the government and survives on its fees for sustenance, cannot be compromised.”

The judge also said the DoE had been “less than fair to the petitioner, and… compelled the petitioner to undergo a needless litigative exercise”. 

‘DoE only required to prevent commercialisation of education’

The petitioner school was established in 1974 on land allotted to it by the Land and Development Office, a central government agency that oversees the allotment of land in national capital Delhi. The documents pertaining to the allotment do not have any clause that require the school to secure DoE approval for fees hikes. 

Ramjas School noted in its petition that the Delhi School Education Rules, 1973, only require the institute to file a full statement of fees for the next academic session with the DoE. The rules, it added, do not contain any clause requiring the DoE’s approval, and only prohibit schools from charging an amount higher than that submitted in the statement of fees. 

Defending its decision, the DoE had said its mandate to prevent commercialisation of education extends to “interfering with the manner in which fees is fixed” by a school. 

The court, however, referred to several Supreme Court judgments on the issue, including the 2004 Modern School v UOI verdict, where the apex court held that the DoE’s function is to only prevent commercialisation of education and not to sit in appeal over the school’s discretion to fix fees. 

“Qua unaided schools which are not situated on land to which the ‘land clause’ applies, therefore, there is uniformity of judicial opinion that the power of the DoE to regulate fees, while undeniable, is limited to ensuring that the school does not indulge in profiteering or charging capitation fees,” the court said. “Absent these two disabling infirmities, the autonomy of unaided educational institutions to fix their fees, cannot be gainsaid,” it added.