Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Tuesday said the cabinet has approved a historical draft bill to regulate fees across all 1,677 private schools in the national capital.

Briefing the press, she said that this is for the first time in city’s history that such a draft bill has been passed which is fool proof and will define the entire procedure, guidelines and procedures regarding the fee, which involves insights of parents, directorate of education, teachers, children and the school management.

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Now, alone the school will not be able to decide about increasing the fees, and valuable inputs from stakeholders such as the wards, parents, teachers, government and others will be taken and then only the decision of increasing the fee could be taken after going through different stages.

This development comes after several parents in Delhi had recently protested against the fee hikes in the private schools, demanding rollback of the same.

According to CM’s claims, earlier during the previous governments, such a provision was never made to regulate and curb such fees rise in Delhi, while the only Act was the Delhi School Act 1973, Gupta added.

She informed that the government had sent District officials across the city to the schools in a bid to probe what parents had reported regarding their wards being allegedly  mistreated and put under unnecessary pressure for hiked fees.

Speaking on the development, Delhi education minister Ashish Sood assured that now the fees of private schools will be regulated and the same will be done in a completely transparent manner.

He said that this bill will create a new dimension of good governance, and will also provide a sigh of relief for the parents of children studying in Delhi’s private schools.

The Act of 1973 did have as such restrictions on schools due to certain sections, and last year after losing a case in the high court the previous government had lost the remaining power in this context.

Talking of some provisions of the bill, Sood said that unlike the previous Act, which lacked strong provisions to monitor and regulate fees hikes by private schools, this bill has three level committee provisions which will decide about the fee increase.

He said now there will be a several number of steps and laid out conditions as per which a school will be able to decide regarding increasing the fee, and there will be involvement of parents as well in taking the decision.

Sood alleged that the previous government only did work of making noise on this issue, while they settled things under the table, rather than regulating the fee hike.