₹7,000 a year per RTE child, ₹300 crore in the budget the Chhattisgarh RTE math

BILASPUR, May 16 — The Bilaspur High Court's contempt deadline for the Chhattisgarh school education secretary, set for May 23, will be the first time the state has to defend two RTE numbers in the same affidavit. Number one: ₹7,000 a year per RTE Class 1-5 student. Number two: ₹300 crore a year for 54,824 RTE seats.

The first number has not moved since 2012. The second was announced on April 16 from Mahanadi Bhavan, alongside the first-phase lottery that selected 14,403 of 38,439 applicants. Divided across all sanctioned seats, the budget works out to roughly ₹54,700 per child — close to eight times the rate individual schools actually receive. School operators want the court to ask where the rest goes.

The contempt petition was filed by the Bilaspur Private School Management Association under Justice P.P. Sahu's single bench, citing the state's failure to act on a September 19, 2025 order to revisit reimbursement. The association is asking for ₹18,000, ₹22,000 and ₹25,000 across the three RTE slabs and three years of arrears. "Every input we pay for is two to three times what it cost in 2012. The state is the only line item that hasn't moved," association president Rajiv Gupta said in the petition. The state's position so far is that reimbursement is adequate. "Schools claiming we can operate at half the budget is not entirely accurate," School Education Minister Gajendra Yadav said on April 9. Days later, on May 6, IAS Siddharth Komal Pardeshi was moved out of the school education chair. IAS Kamalpreet Singh now owns the May 23 response.

The forensic question matters because Chhattisgarh has otherwise stepped up enforcement on the school sector this quarter. The April 25 order capping private school fee hikes at 8 percent and the directorate's separate push to enforce Supreme Court direction that schools cannot deny RTE-allotted admission have both arrived in the same six weeks as the unresolved reimbursement question.

The court is sitting on Friday next week. If the state seeks adjournment, the bench's posture so far suggests it will refuse — and the May 23 affidavit will then need to do work both technical (rate math) and political (why 14 years).

Source: NPG News (May 2), Indianmasterminds.com (April 16), Bansal News (April 9), NWNews24 (May 6).

Related on Inkwelly

For the fee office:

• Student Fee module — collection, receipts, fee committee minutes and approved-fee display
• School Marksheet for CBSE, ICSE & State Boards — bilingual templates and Hindi-script support every Chhattisgarh school office needs

For the student records office:

• Student Information Management — admissions, RTE quota tracking and parent records in one module
• Chronic Absentee Watchlist (RTE 75%) — every student under the RTE attendance floor before the parent-teacher meeting

Background reading:

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Earlier in this thread:

• Chhattisgarh wants 3 years of fee records from private schools