81 pvt schools to refund excess fees to parents: panel to HC

A judicial panel set up by the Delhi High Court has recommended that more than 80 private schools have to refund the excess fees they charged in 2009 without paying salaries to their staff as per the Sixth Pay Commission.
A three-member committee headed by former Rajasthan High Court Chief Justice Anil Dev Singh, set up in 2011, examined the financial records of 173 schools on a random basis out of total 1,172 schools and submitted its fourth interim report before the bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana recently.
With this report, the committee has so far examined the financial records of 605 private schools in the city.

In the report, the committee said that many schools "unjustly" increased fees and recommended that all of them refund the same with 9 per cent interest to the parents.
According to the report, 73 out of 173 schools including Rukmani Devi public school, Pritampura, Kulachi Hansraj Model school, Ashok Vihar and Manav Sthali school in New Rajinder Nagar, where the committee has found the fee hike to be "unjustified, either partially or fully", and hence recommended the refund of excess fee.
About eight other schools, "where besides, finding the fee hike to be unjustified either partially or fully, the committee also found their records to be unreliable", and recommended "special inspection" in addition to refund of fee.

In August 2011, the Delhi Court had set up the committee to scrutinise the accounts of various unaided private schools to determine the validity of the city government's February 2009 notification permitting them to hike tuition fees.
This order had come on a petition filed by an NGO, Social Jurists, through advocate Ashok Agarwal alleging that schools had hiked the fees "unreasonably" but they failed to pay the salaries of the teaching and non-teaching staff as per the Sixth Pay Commission.