Disposing of a batch of petitions filed by the Tamil Nadu Nursery Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools Association and others, the First Bench, comprising Chief Justice H L Gokhale and Justice K K Sasidharan said the scheme of the present Act was in consonance with the laws laid down by the Supreme Court.
The government had placed enough material to prove that private schools were charging ‘exorbitant fees’.
The Bench held that the Act, which came into force in August last year following complaints that private schools were charging exorbitant fees, strikes a balance between autonomy of institutions and contained measures to prevent commercialisation of education.
‘It, by and large, strikes a balance between the autonomy of the institutions and measures to be taken to prevent commercialisation of education,’ the Bench observed, while striking down a provision in the Act that empowered a committee to visit unaided private schools at any time for inspection and seizure observing it was violative of equality provision in the Constitution.
The judges said the power of the Committee or its members under section 11(2) of the Act to enter the private schools or its premises or those of the management at any time for the purposes of search, inspection and seizure was arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.
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