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Held Hostage? Pune School Expels 486 Students As Parents Protest Against Unauthorised Fee Hike
Representative image (Flickr/Terry Feuerborn)
According to a statement released by a group of parents, 486 students were suspended by the authorities of Hadapsar-based Amanora School in Pune for protesting against ‘illegal’ fees hike, reports Hindustan Times (HT).
The decision to suspend the students was taken by the school yesterday (21 March) after 150 parents joined their wards in a protest claiming that the school collected fees ‘in an unauthorised’ way. Following this, the school issued a statement noting that it would be willing to reinstate the expelled students only if the requisite fees were paid.
Hemant Mittal, a participant in the protest, said, “The school demanded Rs 85,000 as fees and, we found that apart from Rs 49,950, the remaining was capitation fees which we will not pay. The school hikes fees every year. We met Vinod Tawde, state education minister, who promised to address the issue.”
Another parent Dhiraj Geadam added that the school was “known to manipulate accounts to misguide the government authorities.”
Were Forced To Take The Drastic Step
However, the school authorities countered these allegations by stating that they were forced to suspend the students as a last resort when all other remedies had failed.“We informed all the parents to pay fees in accordance to the resolution made by the executive committee of PTA...However, despite requests to pay the school fees few parents failed to pay for the academic year 2017-18 and 2018-19 partially or fully.”
We have not deprived all these students of any facilities or initiatives of the school despite their parents not paying the school fees for the last two years...This non-payment was affecting the School’s financial health adversely hence we requested parents to make payments. We were left with no other option but to cancel admission of non-paying students as all our efforts went in vain.” read a statement by the school spokesperson Vikram B Deshmukh,
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