Out of 330 schools, only five returned excess fees.

[Mahendra Kumar Gupta]

NEW DELHI: The Justice Anil Dev Singh Committee has made its recommendations, the high court has cleared them and the Directorate of Education has notified that order but it'll be a while before most parents see even a paisa of the money they're owed by private schools. The committee, over five interim reports submitted to the HC from August, 2012 to May, 2014, identified 330 schools that have been asked to refund the fee to parents with 9% interest per annum. 

On Tuesday, the DoE informed the Delhi high court that only five of these schools have paid up. 

"While five schools of district: NW-B (north-west B) have confirmed in writing that they have refunded the excess fee with 9% interest, the reports from other schools are still awaited," the department informed HC adding that "some of the schools have shown their inability in writing to comply with the ...committee's interim reports by citing various reasons." However, DOE is not writing those amounts off yet and promises it "is making all the efforts to ensure the compliance." 

For the bills the committee's run up —Rs. 2.11 crore—there's been little impact till now. The reply to the RTI filed by lawyer-activist Khagesh Jha shows that the total amount refunded by the five schools to parents is only Rs 51,17,952. The highest amount restored to parents by any school is the Rs 19.46 lakh paid by Aakash Model School at Baljeet Nagar. B.R Tyagi Public Senior Secondary School in Rohini has paid Rs 18.35 lakh; Ch. Khusi Ram Model School in Nangloi has paid Rs 7.15 lakh; Nav Jyoti Public School, Sultanpuri, has paid Rs 3.99 lakh and CPM Public School, Sultanpuri, Rs 2.21 lakh. 

The Justice Anil Dev Singh Committee was established in September 2011 to study if the city's public unaided schools had raised student fee citing the Sixth Central Pay Commission (6th CPC) recommendations without actually raising teachers' salaries. The committee studied the records of 745 schools. Of these 330 were asked to pay back, 95 were recommended for "special inspection", on 55 the committee couldn't decide and 25, they discovered, don't have bank accounts. The committee cleared only 208 schools. 

During the hearing on Tuesday, advocate Ashok Aggarwal also complained to the bench that since February this year, the state government has failed to pay salary to the HC appointed panel examining fee hike. HC then asked the government to ensure the Justice Singh committee gets salaries due.