On Monday last, the Supreme Court hearing a batch of petitions from private school associations challenging the implementation of the new Delhi School Fee Regulation Act (2025) and related rules, said the Court’s main concern wasn’t about the merits of the law itself, but about the timing of its implementation in the middle of an ongoing academic year (2025–26).
Seeing a chance to push ahead the implementation of the law, the Delhi government told the Court that the fee law would not be implemented in the current academic year (2025–26).
The government further told the Court that the law was to be enforced from the next academic year (2026–27) onwards. Government’s strategy worked as after its clarification, the Court said that since its intervention was concerned only with the ‘haste of implementation’, its further intervention at this stage was not necessary.
To put it simply, the Supreme Court did not strike down the law, but in a way empowered the Delhi government for its rollout to the next academic year. To be fair to the Rekha Gupta-led Delhi government, it had never promised to bring a law with retrospective effect. The passage and notification of the law too, never gave an indication that it would be implemented with retrospective effect.
As expected this invited criticism from the Opposition AAP, with its Delhi unit president Saurabh Bhardwaj saying, “Big blow to Delhi’s middle class. The so-called ‘master stroke’ of the BJP government to control private school fees has turned out to be a fraud on the middle-class parents of Delhi.”
Bhardwaj went onto add that “the BJP’s Delhi government itself declared in the Supreme Court that The Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025 will not control, reduce, or even review the exorbitant fee hikes imposed by private schools for the 2025–26 academic session.”
Criticisms aside, it’s true that the spirit and effectiveness of the law would be tested in a few months when the new academic year (2026-27) begins in April. The law has laid out a detailed paraphernalia for putting into place a fee mechanism. To make this apparatus effectively functional would not be very easy.
Delhi Education Minister Ashish Sood, who piloted the law, would have to burn midnight oil to ensure that the efforts of the Directorate of Education are aligned with the government’s vision. This can be done by taking a few firm administrative steps in the direction of building institutional capacity, transparent systems, parent empowerment and strict enforcement.
To achieve this first and foremost, there has to be time-bound constitution of Fee Regulation Committees. The act’s core mechanism depends on the formation of the School Level Fee Regulation Committees (SLFRCs), District Fee Appellate Committees and State-level Revisional Authority.
The directorate has to ensure that every private unaided school constitutes its SLFRC before the new session begins. It could issue binding deadlines (not just advisory circulars), and penalise non-compliance with immediate consequences for the non-constitution of these committees, without which the Act becomes a dead letter.
School managements will inevitably claim confusion about procedures. To avoid this, the Directorate must publish a clear Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) handbook, specifying, how schools must propose fee hikes, which expenditure heads are admissible, which charges are prohibited, format of documentation and most importantly timeline for approvals. Such SOP would lead to real-time regulation and avoid litigation.
The lynchpin of regulation would be a rigorous financial scrutiny otherwise fee hikes will remain arbitrary. Directorate would also be required to create a uniform accounting format, provide for mandatory third-party audits, separation of ‘development’ and such funds from tuition fees and disclosure of surplus and reserve funds.
An effective regulation can be achieved only through an effective regulation authority. Without institutional competence, schools will outsmart regulators. Most education officials are not trained in financial analysis, regulatory adjudication and committee-based governance. The Minister would have to ensure training workshops for, directorate official, both education and accounts officers, and also appellate committee members.
The Act’s most progressive feature is parental participation. But parents can easily be intimidated or sidelined. The Directorate will have to ensure that parent members are selected transparently, receive legal and procedural guidance, the meetings are properly minuted and dissenting parent notes are recognised. Otherwise, committees will become rubber stamps of the school managements.