No Coercive Steps to be taken under Gujarat Self Financed Schools Act, 2017 pending further orders, SC [Read Order]

A Supreme Court Bench comprising of Justices SA Bobde and L Nageswara Rao has ordered that no coercive steps under the Gujarat Self Financed Schools (Relation of Fees) Act, 2017 (‘2017 Act’) should be taken without the leave of the Court, pending the implementation of a host of directions issued today in the matter..The Court passed the order in a Special Leave Petition, preferred by Federation of Self Finance Schools, against the Gujarat High Court’s verdict earlier this month upholding the Constitutional validity of the 2017 Act..The Act puts a cap on fees payable per year for primary (Rs 15,000/p.a.), secondary (Rs 25, 000/p,a.) and higher secondary education (Rs 27, 000/p.a.). The Rules made thereunder state that schools charging higher than the specified slabs shall have to submit a proposal for approval of fixation of fees in accordance with the provisions as stated in the Act..Following representations made by various counsel, the Supreme Court has issued the following interim directions..State of Gujarat is to reconstitute Fee Fixation Committees and the Revisional Authority under the Act within a period of one week. The Committees are to be headed by a retired judge of the High Court. The Revisional Authority shall comprise two retired High Court Judges.In order to fix the exemption limit under Section 9 of the Act, the state government was directed to hear the representatives of the petitioner-schools and one representative from each of the parents’ associations; one which opposes the Act and the other which supports the Act.The state is also expected to disclose the norms by which the various factors suggested by the citizens for fixing the exemption limit will be taken into account.After the exemption limit is fixed, the Fee Fixation Committees are to scrutinize the proposals and the accounts submitted by the various schools and fix the fees. Preferably, the State Government may create the categories of fee structure along with the facilities made available by the schools for easy determination of the fees chargeable by them.The Committees shall provisionally intimate the school and notify the fees chargeable by the schools, on its website. The schools may make a representation before the Committees within 7 days of such notification. The Committees shall finalise the fees chargeable by the schools within one week after receipt of such representations.The State Government was directed to fix the exemption limit within a period of four weeks.The schools which have not submitted their proposals and accounts to the Fee Fixation Committees, were directed to submit the same within a period of two weeks thereafter.The Committees are expected to notify the provisional list within a period of two weeks upon receipt of the proposals and the accounts from the schools. The schools may make a representation in that regard within a period of one week thereafter.The final fixation of fees shall be announced by the Fee Fixation Committees within a period of four weeks’ thereafter.In case a Revision is filed by the schools under section 12(3) of the Act, the same shall be considered and disposed of by the Revisional Authority within a period of 30 days’ thereafterThe final fixation shall not be implemented by the State Government without further orders of this Court.The schools shall declare their fee structure only on a provisional basis and shall not collect anything more than the provisional fees.The Court further directed that any grievance regarding the working of the order shall be made to this Court alone in the present proceedings and not to any other court or forum. In the meantime, the Bench ordered that,.“…no coercive steps under the Gujarat Self Financed Schools (Relation of Fees) Act, 2017, shall be taken by the respondent-State. It is further made clear that this order shall not prejudice the rights and contentions of either party.”.A slew of Senior Advocates appeared in the matter for the petitioners including Mukul Rohatgi, Kapil Sibal, Ranjit Kumar and Gopal Subramanium. Attorney General KK Venugopal and Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the State of Gujarat..Read Order below.