The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has requested the State Education Department to cancel the no objection certificate (NOC) granted to Delhi Public School, Nerul. A letter in this regard was sent on June 11 by deputy municipal commissioner Nitin Kale, after many parents approached the civic body with complaints against the school.
Mr. Kale said the government had issued a notification that schools should not levy fees during the lockdown period or coax parents to pay the fees. “Following complaints by parents that the school was charging the fees, we sent a notice to the school administration. Since there was no reply to the notice, the administrator and the extension officer from the NMMC visited the school. The school, however, did not cooperate with the officers during their enquiries and the officers submitted a negative report of the school. Hence, we wrote to the State government urging it to cancel the NOC,” he said.
Sunil Choudhary, a parent whose children are in Classes VI and IX, along with 200 other parents, had been writing to the corporation, complaining against the school.
“On May 20, the school sent us a notice that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the classes would be conducted online and they would provide the students quality education. Everything in the notice was as per the government guidelines, except that they were asking for the fees. They had also charged us for library, transportation, computer, and digital classroom, which were not being utilised by our children,” Mr. Choudhary said.
The corporation then issued a notice to the school and sought a reply by June 10, he said. “There are many parents who paid the fees as none want to take up a fight with the school fearing that it might affect their children’s career. But someone has to take the initiative so we decided to take it up. Other than the 200 of us, who had made various complaints, rest of the parents would have paid the fees,” Mr. Choudhary said.
Despite several attempts, the principal of the school, J. Mohanty, could not be reached for comment.
