The Madras High Court on Monday sought the response of the Centre to a writ petition filed by Punjab Association, which runs four private schools in Chennai, challenging the constitutional validity of Section 12 (2) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act of 2009 since it restricts reimbursement of fee for students admitted under the law to the amount incurred by the State to educate a child.
Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee directed Assistant Solicitor General G. Karthikeyan to take notice on behalf of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.
In an affidavit, its general secretary Ramesh Lamba pointed out that the RTE Act casts an obligation on private schools to admit students belonging to weaker sections to the extent of at least 25% of sanctioned intake. However, Section 12 (2) of the Act states that, though the schools must provide free education to such children, the expenditure would be reimbursed by the government to the extent of per child expenditure incurred by the State or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever was less.
Underlining the use of the expression ‘whichever is less’ in the legal provision, the petitioner said, such reimbursement would be too low. It was also pointed out that pursuant to the RTE Act, the State had framed statutory rules which also state that the reimbursement would be restricted to the expenditure incurred by the State for a child in a government school or the fee fixed by the committee constituted under the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act of 2009, whichever was less.
Stating that the fee for private schools was being fixed by the committee by taking into consideration several factors, the petitioner said, it was unfair to reimburse less than that amount for students admitted under the RTE Act by harping upon the words ‘whichever is less’ in Section 12(2) of the Act as well as Rule 9 of the Tamil Nadu RTE Rules of 2011.
