Fee determination committee can verify demands by CBSE & ICSE schools, clarifies Madras HC

The Madras High Court has clarified that a 2016 interim order passed by the Supreme Court does not prevent the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee (TNPSFDC) from verifying whether the fees collected by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE)-affiliated private schools is commensurate with the facilities provided by them.

The Madras High Court has clarified that a 2016 interim order passed by the Supreme Court does not prevent the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee (TNPSFDC) from verifying whether the fees collected by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE)-affiliated private schools is commensurate with the facilities provided by them.

Justice V. Lakshminarayanan pointed out that the Supreme Court had kept in abeyance only the other provisions of the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2009, but for Section 7(3), which empowers the TNPSFDC to conduct the verification. Therefore, the committee could continue to perform its statutory function as enunciated under the particular provision of law, he said.

The clarification was provided after a counsel representing Asan Memorial Association in Chennai submitted that the TNPSFDC had decided not to inquire into issues related to CBSE and ICSE schools until the disposal of the appeals pending before the Supreme Court. “When the Supreme Court has kept in abeyance only the other provisions save Section 7(3), I am not in a position to accept the submission,” the judge wrote.

The observations were made while disposing of a civil revision petition filed by the association against an Assistant City Civil Court’s August 1, 2024, order, soliciting the assistance of the TNPSFDC in deciding a civil suit filed for the recovery of fees to the tune of ₹76,275 (for the academic years 2018-19 to 2020-21) from a parent, along with interest at the rate of 12% per annum.

Advocate M. Purushothaman, representing the parent of the Asan Memorial Senior Secondary School student, brought it to the notice of the judge that all the private schools in the State had been fixing their own fee structure and collecting the same from the students either annually, monthly, or on term basis until 2009, when the State legislature came up with the law to regulate the fee structure.

A group of CBSE and ICSE schools filed a batch of writ petitions before the Madras High Court between 2010 and 2012 challenging the applicability of the law to their institutions. A Division Bench of Justices R. Banumathi and R. Subbiah (both retired now) dismissed all the writ petitions on September 21, 2012, and held that the TNPSFDC could determine the fees even for CBSE and ICSE-affiliated schools.

When the matter was taken on appeal in 2013, the Supreme Court on January 28, 2016, granted an interim relief, which read: ‘“We direct that for ICSE and CBSE schools, the regulatory mechanism of the Fee Committee shall be limited during the pendency, of the present controversy, to the one contemplated under Section 7(3) of the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fees) Act, 2009.”