CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has directed the union government to file a report on the disbursal of funds under the Samagra Shiksha scheme for Tamil Nadu.
A vacation bench of justices G R Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan issued the direction to file the report on Friday while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed by V Eswaran, founder of the Coimbatore-based Marumalarchi Makkal Iyakkam praying for orders to admit students under the Right to Education (RTE) Act for the current academic year.
The bench expressed dismay over non-disbursal of the central funds when Additional Advocate General (AAG) J Ravindran submitted that the union government has not released its share of the funds since 2021 due to political animosity.
Informing the bench that the state government has moved the Supreme Court regarding the issue, Ravindran stated the government has convened a meeting to discuss the issue at the end of the month.
The counsel for the central government submitted that the Centre has been allocating funds for the other states but not to Tamil Nadu. The bench commented that if the funds were not provided, the private schools would suffer and adjourned the hearing for Friday.
The petitioner prayed for the court to issue a direction to the respondent authorities to initiate the admission process under RTE Act for 2025-26 immediately.
The notification for admissions to Class 1 under the RTE Act for 25% of the seats, which all private state board schools are mandated to reserve for children from economically weaker sections, are usually issued by the government in mid-April. Following this, applications can be filed on state government’s online portal and the admission processes by respective schools are completed by May.