CHENNAI: In a significant ruling, the Madras High Court has held that the centre’s obligation to disburse its share of funds to Tamil Nadu towards reimbursement of fees for students admitted in private schools under the Right to Education (RTE) Act is an independent responsibility and it need not be linked with the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).
The state government has the non-derogable obligation to reimburse the fee to private unaided schools, and non-receipt of funds from the centre cannot be cited as a reason to wriggle out of that statutory obligation, the court said.
A division bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan issued the ruling while disposing of a PIL petition by Coimbatore-based activist V Eswaran praying for directions to the TN government to begin admissions under the RTE Act for 2025-26.
The court observed that the obligation under the RTE Act is independent by itself. It referred to Section 7 of the Act that says that the central and state governments will have concurrent responsibility to provide funds for implementing the provisions of the Act.
Section 7(3) also mandates that the centre provide the state government a specific percentage of expenditure referred under sub-section 2 as grant-in-aid from time-to-time in consultation with state governments, the bench noted.
“Therefore, funds payable to the state government, representing the central government’s share, towards discharging the RTE Act obligations need not be linked to NEP-2020,” the court said.
Can’t issue directions on RTE funds as TN govt has moved SC: Madras HC
The bench, however, said it cannot issue binding directions since the TN government has already filed a suit in the Supreme Court regarding the non-disbursal of funds under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme.
(The Tamil Nadu government recently moved the Supreme Court against the union government for non-disbursal of its share of Rs 2,152 crore under the Samagra Shiksha scheme over differences regarding signing of a Memorandum of Understanding regarding implementation of PM SHRI, another centrally-sponsored scheme, and three-language formula and other provisions of the NEP).
Pointing out that the RTE component would be less than Rs 200 crore, the bench said there cannot be any difficulty in releasing this share by the central government. “Therefore, we direct the centre to consider delinking the RTE component from the Samagra Shiksha Scheme and disburse the funds,” the HC said.
Further, the bench directed the state government to adhere to the timeline stated in the statute as the quantum of disbursement to schools cannot be arbitrary but it has to be as per section 12 (2) of the Act read with TN Right to Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules.