State Govt Can't Transgress Fees Fixed By Fee Regulatory Committee: Telangana High Court

In a case pertaining to fee fixation by the government of Telangana without any recommendation in that regard by the Fee Regulatory Committee, which had already fixed the fee for the same period, a bench of Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Dr. Shameen Akhter held:

once the FRC has been constituted by the state government and it has fixed the fee for a certain period, as is its mandate and the state government had been notified of the same, several times, then the state government has transgressed its jurisdiction by going ahead in fixing the fees for the same block and in issuing a government order in pursuance thereof.

Background

The Government of the State of Andhra Pradesh by exercising its powers under S.15 read with S.3 and S.7 of Andhra Pradesh Educational Institution Act 1983, constituted a Fee Regulatory Committee and assigned it with the task of fixing fee.

After the bifurcation of the State, the FRC constituted in the year 2015 had fixed fees for the duration of 2016 – 2019. On receiving numerous representations from private medical colleges, the Special Chief Secretary to the Government wrote a letter to FRC to examine such representations for minority and non-minority PG Medical and Dental Courses and FRC in response, informed the State government that they had already fixed the fee for the years 2016-2019. But despite this, the state government went ahead to fix the fee for the same period.

Accordingly, two writ petitions had come up before High Court alleging that the Government of Telangana had issued a government order for fee fixation, which was the mandate of the Fee Regulatory Committee which was formed by the State government.

Findings

The Court perused the apex court's judgment in Islamic Academic of Education & Another v. State of Karnataka & Ors., where the apex court had directed every state government to set up a committee headed by a retired High Court judge in absence of an effective statute/regulation to govern the determination of fees.

Further elaborating on this committee, the court had directed that each educational institute must place their proposed fee structure before this committee, well in advance of the academic year and the committee shall be at liberty to approve the fee structure or to propose some other fee to be charged by the institute and the fee fixed by the Committee shall be binding for a period of three years and the institutes can only apply for revision at the end of this three-year duration.

The Court further referred to the apex court's judgments in P.A. Inamdar & Others, Vasavi Engineering College Parents Association v. State of Telangana & Ors. and stated that

"it is very clear that the state government has got no role in the matter of fee fixation and the determination of the fee has to be done by a regulatory committee in respect of unaided private professional institutions."

Thus, the court declared that the government's order must be struck down as it contradicted several statutory provisions and Supreme Court judgments and directed that colleges are only entitled to charge fees fixed by the Fee Regulatory Committee for the block period of 2016-2109. The writ petitioners are allowed and government order was quashed.