New Delhi: A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court by the parents of children from different states seeking declaration of moratorium or deferment of payment of school fees during the COVID-19 induced lockdown.
The plea also seeks direction to Centre and all the States for directing all the private unaided/aided schools to only charge the proportionate fees based on actual expenditure towards the conduct of the online virtual classes and no other fees from the students since April 1 till the commencement of physical classes.
“The petitioners belonging to different states of India have come together being constrained to approach this Court seeking inter alia the protection of fundamental right to life as well as education guaranteed under the Constitution of India, 1950 which the children and students enrolled up to the Class XII of various Indian states are being deprived of due to supervening factors namely, the ongoing pandemic- COVID-19 period….”the plea said.
It said that due to COVID-19 induced lockdown, financially incapacitated parents have to bear the brunt of the fees of the children, even after being faced with constant financial and emotional hardships which may leave a few of them with no option but to withdraw their children or students from seeking institutional/school education for an unforeseeable period of time.
“The Petitioners are also aggrieved apart from other issues as raised in the present petition by the unorganised and adversely influencing education imparted in the name of online classes, without addressing the supervening factors of incapacity of 25 per cent EWS category students, adverse impact of education of children of unregulated online education for students of Standard Nursery to 5th and for other students as well,” the plea said.
The parents through the petition filed through advocate Mayank Kshirsagar and drawn by advocate Pankhuri said that they are highlighting various factors leading to creation of hostile discrimination of children and parents of various states in India as some protection may be available for children or students in some states and the same may not be available in other states.
Parents of the school going children who have moved the top court hail from Rajasthan, Odisha, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Maharashtra.
In their plea they said that considering the adverse impact of online education, ban has been imposed by Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh while othersStates have not considered its impact.
The petition said that direction be issued to schools to only charge the ‘tuition fees’ and no other fees whatsoever from the enrolled students since April 1 till physical classes resumes.