HC stays school fee hike

Bhubaneswar: Orissa High Court on Wednesday directed the Regional Director of the DAV Public Schools to appear in the court on May 13 and explain why they have issued a notice to hike fees at a time when the matter is subjudice.The court also issued a contempt notice to Regional Director Himanshu Mohanty for issuing the notice. The court also declared the notice as null and void. Expressing its solidarity with thousands of parents who have been suffering at the hands of the monopoly of the DAV Management, the court also directed private English medium schools not to oust the students who failed to abide by the enhanced fee structure.After the DAV Management decided to hike the fee arbitrarily without taking parents into confidence, the aggrieved parents knocked the doors of the High Court and appealed the apex court to bail them out from the problem. A number of parents also pointed out that how they were passing through mental agony as they could not be able to the meet the demands of the DAV management. The DAV management took the decision on the plea that they were planning to give salaries to the teachers at par with the 6th pay commission’s recommendations. But the school management failed to give answers to the queries of the parents on how they had spent the money which they collected from the students. Later, the Orissa High Court issued a stay on the Government notification allowing private English medium institutions to hike their tuition and development fees from the 2009-10 academic session. Some parents had challenged the move by schools to hike fees terming it arbitrary and unilateral. They had submitted that there was no transparency or accountability on the part of DAV public schools in fixing and implementing the hike.The Government on March 27 had allowed private schools to increase the fee structure provisionally up by 25 per cent only for those schools which were paying the 5th Pay Commission scales and were to implement the 6th Pay Commission award to their staff. Similarly the Development fees could be increased up to 15 per cent, the notification issued on March 27 stated.
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