Supreme Court tells govt to consider deferring school fee law to April

Without passing any order, the bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe noted that the recently notified Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025, “talks about the implementation from next year. You are saying that you will start from this year retrospectively.”

The Supreme Court on Monday told the Delhi government to consider deferring the enforcement of its law fixing fees of private schools to April 2026, observing that implementing it for the present academic session will be “unviable”. The court asked the government to think on the matter and report back next week.

The bench posted the matter for January 27 (Representative photo)

Without passing any order, the bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe noted that the recently notified Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025, “talks about the implementation from next year. You are saying that you will start from this year retrospectively.”

Posting the matter on January 27, the bench said, “No doubt, the fees are phenomenally high. This is legislation for public welfare. But, in your over anxiety, you are creating institutions which are not viable. Acting hurriedly may lead to the committee not being constituted properly. This also will have an effect of recovery on them (schools). It will be unviable as you are forcing people to get up overnight.”

The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by various private school associations in the Capital challenging a Delhi High Court interim order refusing to stay the Act as well as a Delhi government notification directing all the schools in the Capital to constitute a fee regulation committee for the 2025–26 academic session.

The court asked the Delhi government to take instructions, even as it said, “We propose to interfere as little as possible. If you are merely saying about the constitution of the committee, there is no harm. We will interfere with the HC order if your intention is to regulate fees for 2025-26. Think about it.”

Additional solicitor general (ASG) SV Raju, appearing for the Delhi government, said that the matter was elaborately argued in the HC and the government had agreed to extend the time for the schools to implement thecircular at their request. He explained, “It’s a one-time exercise of power for this year. The other aspect of the law is for subsequent years. The fee that is being charged for this year will be deemed to be the proposed fees for 2025-26. This will then go to the School Level Fee Regulation Committee (SLFRC).”

The court told ASG, “This academic year has already begun. The approval should have been done by July. Even that period has passed. What is the over anxiety here? ….We are completely in favour of having the legislation although this is not the final word. We are troubled only by the aspect of fees. Constitution of committee is good enough.”

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the private schools, told the court that the constitutional validity of the 2025 Act is under challenge before the high court. Referring to the circular, he then said, “The current academic session of 2025-26 is almost over. The circular now wants that for this academic year that began on April 1, 2025, the fees have to be retrospectively fixed by the SLFRC. How can it be for the current year?”

Further, the schools argued that the circular runs contrary to the Act which itself contemplates implementation from next year. “What they are trying to do is that the Act contemplates formation of the committee in July. They want to advance it and ask them to do it in January so as to implement it this year,” the court observed.

The petitions were filed by individual schools along with Action Committee for Unaided Recognised Private Schools, Delhi Public School Society, Forum of Minority Schools, among others.

In their petition before the HC, the schools claimed that their right to independently fix fees has been interfered with by the formation of SLFRC. Section 4(b) of the Act provides the composition of this 11-member committee of which only two members can be representatives of the management. Further, the nominee of the Director of Education is to be part of the committee, whose presence is mandatory for the SLFRC decision to be valid. Section 5(4) mandates that fee approval by SLFRC must be based on unanimous agreement, indicating that every single member of the committee can veto the fee proposed by the management.