Apex Court takes cognizance of the CUSB Gaya Student's Letter Petition on fee issue, registers PIL

Anurag Chakraborty

Legal Intern, LAP

Name and educational background –

Mr. Anupam Prabhat Shrivastava, Law Student, Central University of South Bihar, Gaya.

The reason for approaching NHRC -

The NHRC is known as the National Human Rights Commission of India, it deals with providing legal assistance to those people whose human rights has been violated.

The issue for the plea –

The issue is about all the students of India, who are studying in educational institutes such as schools and colleges, are being asked to pay the full fees of their academic year which contained exorbitant and arbitrary fees such as internet fees, transportation fees, sports fees and also smart class fees which is questionable and the services of whose are not being availed by the students due this pandemic. The situation that stands amid this pandemic is that most of the families don’t have enough financial capacity given that the organization where they work have issued pay cuts and many are yet to receive their payments. So, in this financial crisis the educational institutions are demanding exorbitant and unreasonable fees, that too they are asking for the fees in advance for the full academic year in place of their regular monthly fees. All of these factors have led to grave injustice against the students and thus Mr. Anupam has filed a plea in the NHRC.

Plea in the High court of Patna-

The NHRC dismissed the plea, as it said that it does not fulfill the criteria of a violation of a human right. So, Mr. Anupam filed a plea before the Patna High court which stated that the educational institutes should not charge this unreasonable amount of fees, which included transportation fees. Sports fees, hostel fees, etc. He further asked the hon’ble court to not stop the money that is given to the MPhil. students, who are already facing a lot of problems as the new UGC guidelines has extended their course to further six months. The High court took cognizance and thus sent a notice to the chief secretary of Bihar. They were given 2 weeks of time to file a report of this matter. Since then Mr. Anupam has been tracking the report and has been unable to do so as they agencies did not file a report in the first 2 weeks. In response to this the Patna High court has sent a reminder to them as to file it at the earliest. After this Mr. Anupam has been trying to contact the authorities, even the registrar of the high court but has not been given any response. As the plea has been the dismissed in NHRC, now the same plea has been forwarded as a letter petition in the Supreme court.

Cognizance of the plea by the Supreme Court –

After 3 weeks, the case that was transferred was finally put to attention of the apex court and they sent a confirmation regarding the registration of the same through SMS and has provided with a diary number saying that the grievance has been recognized by the hon’ble court and has also provided with a grievance related website, in which the status of the proceedings can be tracked.