Yogi's next agenda: Reining in school fee, constructing religious circuits

UP government is likely to move to put a cap on the fee structures of private schools in the state

After fulfilling its poll promise to waive off farm loans of the state’s small and marginal farmers, constituting anti-Romeo squads to keep a check on harassment of women and crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses, the Yogi Adityanath government is all set to bring relief to another significant support base of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the middle classes.

The Adityanath government is likely to move to put a cap on the fee structures of private schools in the state.

An ordinance, UP schools (regularization of fee collection), is in the works and stakeholders consulted before its placed for the approval of the state cabinet.

Parents have consistently demanded that fee charged by private schools in Uttar Pradesh, particularly in some of its bigger cities of Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Noida and others, be regulated.

Parents have complained how there are significant differences between the fee structure of schools in Delhi, where a law exists to regulate school fee, and the branches of these very schools in Uttar Pradesh, where no such law exists.

The law in the works is likely to specify penal provisions for errant schools, including cancelling of registration of schools. A fee regulating committee, headed by a retired High Court judge, will also be put in place. Rajasthan, Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have laws to regulate school fee.

Apart from the loan waiver for small and marginal farmers, the BJP’s manifesto, or Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra, had also promised providing interest free crop loans to farmers, ensuring payment to sugarcane farmers within 14 days of sale of their produce and payment of pending dues within 120 days of forming of the government.

It has even promised controlling the population of nilgai, which belongs to the antelope family, and is a menace to standing crop. Other agriculture sector related promises of the BJP were providing cheaper electricity to farmers and setting up a Rs 20,000 crore irrigation fund.

As for employment generation, the BJP has promised filling up 1.5 lakh vacancies in the police force, set up a Rs 1,000 crore startup venture capital fund and skill training centres in districts.

The Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra also promised free laptops to colleges students, free education to girls till completion of graduation and free college education to boys if they score more than 50 per cent in Class XII.

As part of the BJP and Sangh Parivar’s cultural agenda, the manifesto promised encouraging study of Sanskrit at the school level and taking steps, under the purview of the Constitution, for the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and putting in place infrastructure for religious tourism, that would include building three separate tourism circuits connecting sites believed to be associated with the lives of Rama, Krishna and Buddha.