File picture of a DAV school in Cuttack

Bhubaneswar: April 20: The fee-hike controversy surrounding DAV schools of the twin cities has come to an end.

The Supreme Court has permitted the school management authorities to revise the fee according to the recommendations of fee structure committee.

The decision will affect about 30,000 students at eight DAV schools in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

The fee can now be hiked from 47 to 121 per cent in various classes according to the recommendations of the committee.

“We welcome the court’s decision.We will go through the judgment properly and implement the hike accordingly. We were initially satisfied with the hike suggested by the committee and are planning to implement it from this month onwards,” said regional director of DAV institutes for Odisha K.C. Satpathy.

The parents said they were also happy with the court’s decision.

“The court has decided that if the school management goes for a fee hike of over 15 per cent, it has to be with the permission of the parents’ association as well as the state government,” said Kartik Sahoo, coordinator of the All-Odisha DAV Parents’ Association.

“The court has also recognised the association legally, which makes us all the more happy,” he added.

Parents are also glad that the apex court did not allow the school to impose the hike with retrospective effect. “Tt would otherwise have been very difficult for all the parents to arrange for such a huge amount,” said Mahendra Parida, another parent adding that the case has been going on since 2009.

The DAV school authorities were also happy that the apex court directed the present school managing committee to continue.

The DAV group of schools and the parents have been at loggerheads since 2009 when the school authorities increased the tuition fee on the plea of implementing the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations for teaching and non-teaching staff.

This was objected by the parents’ associations, which later moved the Orissa High Court.

The high court ruled that the hike was ‘contrary to law’. Challenging the high court verdict, the school management moved the Supreme Court, which in an interim order in May 2012 asked the state government to constitute a committee to decide the fee structure.

The committee recommended a three-fold hike in fee with retrospective effect from June 2012 that led to widespread resentment among parents across the state followed by demonstrations and boycott of classes by both teachers and students.