The Telangana High Court has issued notices to the Central and the State governments in a PIL petition over the non-implementation of Government Order (GO) Ms no. 1 of 1994 comprising rules governing and recognising unaided private schools.
A Bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice J. Sreenivas Rao heard the plea filed by Help The People Charitable Trust represented by its president K.A.S. Guru Teja. The petitioner contended that failure to enforce the GO was resulting in, among other things, exorbitant fees fixation by managements of private schools.
Citing rule 18 (relating to criteria for fee fixation) of the GO, the petitioner informed the court that a private school in Hyderabad was charging ₹17.86 lakh for one kindergarten student. “This is around more than 9 times of max fee fixed for the private unaided engineering college,” the petitioner stated.
According to the petitioner, the governments were not providing mid-day meals (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) as per the rules in government schools. “Even the Integrated Child Development Service Scheme (meant for women and children) was also not being implemented properly,” he stated.
An inquiry under the RTI Act revealed that in five districts of Telangana, food samples were collected from only two schools of two districts to test quality of food served under mid-day meal programme.
