CHENNAI: In a significant ruling, the Madras High Court has held that the centre’s obligation to disburse its share of funds to Tamil Nadu towards reimbursement of fees for students admitted in private schools under the Right to Education (RTE) Act is an independent responsibility and it need not be linked with the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).

The state government has the non-derogable obligation to reimburse the fee to private unaided schools, and non-receipt of funds from the centre cannot be cited as a reason to wriggle out of that statutory obligation, the court said.

A division bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan issued the ruling while disposing of a PIL petition by Coimbatore-based activist V Eswaran praying for directions to the TN government to begin admissions under the RTE Act for 2025-26.

The court observed that the obligation under the RTE Act is independent by itself. It referred to Section 7 of the Act that says that the central and state governments will have concurrent responsibility to provide funds for implementing the provisions of the Act.

Section 7(3) also mandates that the centre provide the state government a specific percentage of expenditure referred under sub-section 2 as grant-in-aid from time-to-time in consultation with state governments, the bench noted.

“Therefore, funds payable to the state government, representing the central government’s share, towards discharging the RTE Act obligations need not be linked to NEP-2020,” the court said.

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