‘No name should be struck off over fees’: Calcutta high court – Times of India

KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court in an order said no school or academic institution should remove any student from their rolls for non-payment or short-payment of fees till July 31. The HC will hear the case on July 2.
A division bench of Justice I P Mukerji and Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya in their order on Friday said that “keeping in view the situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic, no school or other institution in this state should remove any student from its rolls on the ground of non or short payment of fees without the leave of this court till 31st July or until further orders, whichever is earlier.”
The fresh HC directions came after the division bench on June 4 started hearing a PIL which urged the HC’s October 2020 order asking schools to charge 80% of fees to be implemented again in the 2021-22 because schools have not started physical classes.
On October 13, 2020, a HC division bench of which justice Bhattacharya was a member, had passed an order that there will be no increase in the school fees during the financial year 2020-21 and that “from the month beginning April 2020 till the month following the one in which the schools reopen in the physical mode” all the 145 schools (who were involved in the case) would “offer a minimum 20 per cent reduction of the fees across the board”. The order had said that “non-essential charges for use of facilities not availed of would not be permissible”.