High Court directs Delhi Govt to reimburse tuition fee to Class 12 student under post matric scholarship scheme

The Delhi High Court recently directed the Delhi government to reimburse tuition fees amounting to Rs 44,100 to a class 12th student of Rukmani Devi Jaipuria Public School under the post-matric scholarship scheme for Schedules Caste students in Delhi.

The bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh noted that the error made by the school in the present case was that the tuition fee of Rs.44,100 paid by the petitioner had not been filled up by the school in the online form for reimbursement; consequently, the fee was not reimbursed.

Advocates Rahul Sagar Sahay and Raghav Rajmalani appearing for the petitioner stated that the Delhi government framed the post-matric scheme for SC students to implement Central Government's scholarship scheme. The Central Government also contributes 60% to the Delhi scholarship scheme and because of the requirement of pre-payment of hefty tuition fees in institutes at the time of admissions, the Central Government scheme was designed to reduce the number of drop-outs during education.

The counsel stated that the Central Government scheme enables all eligible students to take admission in the institutions ‘without pre-payment of tuition fees’ and to implement this, “free ship cards” were issued based on which schools/institutes have to give admissions. Such institutes were then paid upon receipt of scholarship funds by the students from the government.

“The concept of 'free ship card' was devised to ensure that no student is forced to drop out because of non-payment of tuition fees at the time of admissions. However, the Delhi scheme seemed to have missed this very core objective. It based itself on ‘reimbursement of tuition fee’ instead of providing ‘scholarship without pre-payment of tuition fee through free ship card, resulting in enormous hardship to many students like the Petitioner”, the counsel submitted.

The counsel stated that many students and their families struggle hard to arrange the money to pay the initial admission fee to secure admission; consequently, a large number of students are even forced to drop out.

It was also contended that the petitioner, Ankush Kumar, was even denied the reimbursement of tuition fee because of the error of the school concerned and there was no system to rectify the error.

Ankush has sought substantial changes in framing and implementation of the Delhi scheme, so that thousands of students like him, do not suffer from such hardship.

Taking note of the submissions, Justice Singh directed the Delhi government to reimburse the fees and also issued notice to respondents. The court further directed the respondents to file their responses on the issues raised in the plea, especially regarding the issue of admissions without pre-payment of tuition fees based on free ship cards.

Accordingly, the court listed the matter for further hearing on August 16.

CASE TITLE: ANKUSH KUMAR v UNION OF INDIA & ORS.