Chandigarh (ILNS): The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that private schools in the states can take tuition fee from students only if they have offered daily online classes during the lockdown period. The court also directed the school managements to file within two weeks the balance sheets for the preceding seven months.
“All the teachers and staff members, whether permanent or appointed on contractual basis/ad-hoc basis/temporary shall be entitled to their regular salaries, which they were getting before imposition of lock-down on 23.03.2020. Since the students are not being transported to and fro due to lock-down, the School Managements shall not charge any transportation charges till further orders. The School Managements are directed to file balance sheets for preceding seven months from today, duly verified by a Chartered Accountant within two weeks from today,” said the order.
A division bench of Justices Rajiv Sharma and Harinder Singh Sidhu heard the case through video-conferencing. Advocate General Atul Nanda represented the Punjab government while Additional Advocate General Deepak Balyan represented Haryana government, on Thursday.
The High Court, in orders passed for Punjab on June 30 and which were extended to Haryana on July 27, had permitted all private schools to collect admission and tuition fee from students, regardless of whether they were holding online classes or not. The order was then challenged by both the state governments.
-ILNS