Contempt plea filed in Madras HC against TN school education officials

MADURAI: A contempt petition has been filed in the

Madurai

bench of the Madras high court seeking action against officials of the

school education

department for their failure to comply with its order to them to appoint the chairman of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee.

The petition, filed by B Karthee, came up for hearing before the division bench headed by Justice A Selvam on Tuesday. The court was told that the government had transferred the principal secretary of the school education department.

The court directed the petitioner to implead proper officials to the case and adjourned the hearing to March 28.

The government on Monday transferred school education secretary D Sabitha and posted T Udhayachandran in her place. Thus, it is expected that the new secretary would be impleaded in the case.

The post of chairman of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee has been lying vacant since the fee committee’s former chairman justice S R Singaravelu demitted the office in December 2015. The state government had not taken steps to fill the vacancy.

It led Karthee to file a public interest litigation saying that the committee was supposed to fix fees for schools in the state which has around 12,000 private nursery, primary, matriculation and Anglo Indian schools. Many private schools were collecting excess fees from the students for the academic year 2016-17. Hence, it was necessary to fill the vacancy immediately, the petitioner’s side had prayed the division bench headed by former chief justice of the Madras high court Sanjay Kishan Kaul (who has now elevated to the Supreme Court).

The government side told the court that the government was taking all the steps to fill the vacancy. However, due to the circumstances that were prevailing then (hospitalisation of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa), the task was getting delayed, the government side said.

Following that, the bench gave the government four weeks to complete the task of appointing the chairman. However, it did not do so. Hence, contempt petition was filed.