Stay granted on private schools' plea against 20pc fee reduction lifted.

Byline: Ishaq Tanoli

KARACHI -- The Sindh High Court on Wednesday vacated the stay order it granted earlier against a 20 per cent concession to parents in school fees for the months of April and May after provincial authorities informed it that the Sindh Covid-19 Emergency Relief Ordinance had been promulgated.

Earlier, the SHC had suspended a special order issued by the directorate of inspection/registration of private institutions on April 28 asking the private schools to provide the 20pc mandatory concession in the tuition fee of students for the two months after the privately managed schools challenged the same.

When the matter came up for hearing before a two-judge bench headed by Justice Nadeem Akhtar on Wednesday, Advocate General Salman Talibuddin filed a statement along with the copy of the Sindh Covid-19 Emergency Relief Ordinance, 2020 gazetted on May 18, which was taken on record.

The chief law officer submitted that the ordinance had superseded the three clauses of the April 28 special order, which was challenged by the petitioners.

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The lawyer for the petitioners argued that besides some other clauses of the special order, they had also impugned another notification issued by the school education and literacy department on April 27 to add rules 19-A to 19-E in the Sindh Private Educational Institutions (Regulations and Control) Rules 2005 empowering the directorate of inspection/registration of private institutions to issue a special order in extraordinary circumstances including enhancement or reduction in fee and remuneration of teachers and other staff. He requested to hear the petition in these points.

'The interim orders passed earlier need not be extended as clauses (ii), (iii) and (iv) of the impugned special order dated 28.04.2020 have now lost the field in the view of promulgation of the above ordinance,' the bench said in its order.

The TYMS Education Private Limited and others had petitioned the SHC again after their first petition was disposed of for being infructuous on a similar matter challenging the special order issued on April 28 about 20pc concession and April 27 notification regarding amendments in relevant rules by giving powers to the registering authority to issue a special order.

It may be recalled that initially, the directorate of inspection/registration of private institutions had issued a notification on...