Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Education Minister Ashish Sood on Saturday met parents of the students studying in private schools in the national capital to further discuss the issue of fee hike. The meeting was held at the Delhi Secretariat to discuss the proposed Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025.
The proposed law introduces three major reforms in regulating the city's fee regime. It will be applicable to all 1,677 private unaided schools in Delhi. CM Gupta has called the legislation a "bold and historic" attempt that will stop the private schools from "acting arbitrarily".
During the interaction with the CM, parents welcomed the move as a long-awaited reform, which they said would bring transparency to school fees, provide them relief, and make the education system more accountable.
“For 27 years, private schools had been arbitrarily increasing fees without any checks or clear regulations. Previous governments had no concrete legal mechanism to control such practices," CM Gupta said during the meeting, as reported by Indian Express.
She also told the parents that Delhi government will not tolerate harassment over fees and asked them to report the matter directly to her office or to the education minister in case they face harassment over fees.
Sharing about her meeting with the parents, CM Rekha Gupta took to X, where she asserted that "Education is a right, not a business". "Today at the Delhi Secretariat, Cabinet colleague and Delhi Education Minister Mr. @ashishsood_bjp held a dialogue with parents of students studying in various private schools," she wrote, along with a video from her interaction with the parents.
"'Education is a right, not a business.' With this guiding principle, the Cabinet approved the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025," she added.
CM Gupta further highlighted Delhi government's commitment to ensuring that every citizen will have be given quality, accessible, and equitable education in order to make it a universally accessible right and not a burden on parents.
Education Minister Sood also pointed out that the bill was a repsonse to several long-standing grievances to which the previous government had turned a blind eye. "Education will no longer be a tool for exploitation or mental harassment of students, he said.
The three-tier fee regulation structure proposed in the bill includes committees at the school, district, and state levels to institutionalise participation of parents in the process. It also introduces stiff penalties for non-compliance with fines between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. The third reform is about the parameters such as quality of infrastructure, need for funds, and academic performance, which must be considered while determining fees.