NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Tamil Nadu government’s petition challenging a Madras High Court order for reimbursing private unaided schools under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act. The two-judge bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta sought responses from the Centre and the petitioner before the high court and posted the matter after four weeks.
Arguing that the central and state governments shared concurrent responsibilities for funding education, TN’s counsel P Wilson said, “The Madras High Court erred in ruling that only the state is primarily responsible for these expenditures.”
He said TN had moved the apex court by filing the plea seeking a directive to the Centre to release its share of funds under Section 7 of RTE Act. “The joint responsibility for free education cannot be linked with compliance of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020,” he argued.
On June 10, the high court decided the petitioner’s plea for directions to the authorities to initiate the admission process under the RTE Act for academic year 2024-25. It said the TN government had the primary responsibility under Section 7(5) of the Act to provide funds for the implementation of its provisions.
The HC also put TN government under a “non-derogable obligation” to reimburse private unaided schools and held, “Non-receipt of funds from the union government cannot be cited as a reason to wriggle out of this statutory obligation.” The HC further called upon the Centre to discharge its obligations under the Act.
Alleging that for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, centre had failed to release its 60 per cent share, worth Rs 342.69 crores, forcing TN to cover the expenditure, Wilson said the HC failed to consider such disbursal of the obligatory financial contribution of the centre under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme declaring that funds payable to TN for covering centre’s share towards discharging RTE obligations need not be linked to NEP-2020.
It must be noted that V Eswaran filed a PIL in the Madras HC raising concerns about delays in initiating RTE admissions for the academic year 2025-26 in TN since no applications had been invited for the 25% RTE quota by mid-May putting the commencement of the academic session at risk.