The Supreme Court on Monday extended its October 28 interim order by which it had declined to interfere with the Calcutta High Court directions to private schools in Bengal to waive 20 per cent of their tuition fees and completely waive the fees for services that could not be offered because of the pandemic.

The interim order had, however, stayed certain portions of the high court judgment that asked schools to consider individual applications from parents for further waiver and allowed parents to approach a committee if they did not get redress from the schools.

The apex court bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R.Subhash Reddy passed Monday’s order while issuing notices to the Bengal government and the petitioner before the high court, on a batch of fresh petitions filed by some aggrieved private schools challenging the impugned high court order.

The bench, while tagging the fresh petitions with the earlier ones, posted the matter for further hearing to the first week of January. Which means the private schools in Bengal, including those run by the Church, will have to offer the pandemic fee cut till further orders.

“Permission to file special leave petitions is allowed. Issue notice. Tag with SLP(C) No… There shall be interim order to the same effect, as passed on 28.10.2020 in Special Leave Petition … List in the first week of January, 2021,” the bench said in a brief order.

A consortium of schools under the Church of North India and various other schools have filed special leave petitions challenging the October 13 judgment of the high court. In the earlier hearing, the apex court had declined to stay the entire judgment of the high court but said it was staying only directions 8 to 16 contained in paragraph 61 of the judgment.

Directions 8 to 16 allowed parents to write to schools seeking further relief in terms of waiver or exemption or delayed or instalment payments. It also allowed them to approach a three-member committee if schools failed to address their concern.

The private schools had assailed the high court judgment on the ground that it was contrary to a number of rulings by the Supreme Court in the T.M.A. Pai, P.A. Inamdar and other cases, wherein it was ruled that private unaided schools were free to manage their affairs without any interference from the State.

The high court had passed the order while dealing with a PIL by Vineet Ruia, who had alleged that private schools had been disallowing students from attending online classes or writing their exams on the ground that they had not paid their fees. Several parents could not afford the fees because the Covid pandemic had hit their earnings.