The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Tamil Nadu government’s challenge to a Madras High Court order directing it to reimburse private unaided schools for admissions under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta issued notices to the Centre and the original petitioner before the high court, seeking their responses. The matter has been posted for hearing after four weeks.
On June 10, the Madras High Court had ruled on a plea seeking directions to the authorities to initiate the admission process under the RTE Act for the 2024–25 academic year. It held that under Section 7(5) of the Act, the state government bore the primary responsibility of providing funds for implementation.
The court observed that the Tamil Nadu government was under a “non-derogable obligation” to reimburse private unaided schools and that the “non-receipt of funds from the Union government cannot be cited as a reason to wriggle out of this statutory obligation.”
The high court also called upon the Centre to discharge its role, directing it to consider “de-linking the RTE component of the Samagra Shiksha Scheme (SSS) and disburse the funds accordingly.”
Counsel for Tamil Nadu had submitted that while private school managements were indeed entitled to reimbursement, the responsibility should be shared between the Centre and the states. The state argued that it had not received its legitimate dues from the Union government, which in turn delayed payments to schools.
Highlighting this, the high court suo motu impleaded the Union government in the matter. The Centre, however, maintained that while committed to ensuring every child’s access to education, the SSS was an integrated scheme aligned with the National Education Policy 2020. It also stressed that Section 7(5) placed the primary obligation on state governments.
