Former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has alleged that since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dropped out of power, private schools across the Capital have been hiking their fees.
Sisodia accused the BJP-led government of colluding with school managements and turning a blind eye to the financial burden on parents. Alleging a deeper issue, the former education minister also said there might be a nexus between private school managements and BJP leaders, and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the matter.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Sisodia said, “The biggest worry for us right now is that private schools have started increasing their fee. Back when we formed the government, we had made a regulation to ensure that private schools cannot arbitrarily increase their fee… In 2015, we had carried out an audit of each school for which we had hired CAs, and made it mandatory that schools will require a government nod before they can increase their fee.”
Sisodia claimed that the ruling BJP is “hand in glove” with private schools, enabling unjustified fee hikes. Citing specific examples, Sisodia pointed out that Ahlcon Public School had increased its fees for Class 11 from Rs 11,000 to Rs 12,000 while Angels Public School had implemented an 11 per cent hike, among others.
He emphasised that the AAP government had enforced strict measures to curb arbitrary fee hikes, including a comprehensive financial audit by chartered accountants empanelled by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
“Only those schools were given permissions for which the CAG-empanelled CAs had affirmed that the school needs to increase their fee in order to provide salaries. Any school that had money in their coffers was not allowed to increase their fee,” Sisodia said.
He added, “Many schools had only approached the court in opposition to the government’s decision. If you would have noticed then during my tenure, the highest number of cases against any department was the education department. These were mostly cases in which private schools had approached the court.”
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