In a huge relief to thousands of parents in Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court on Tuesday set aside a single judge's order staying implementation of individual fee structure for private unaided schools drawn up by a government-appointed committee.

"In our considered opinion, the impugned interim order passed by the single judge cannot be sustained in law and is liable to be set aside," a bench comprising chief justice M Y Eqbal and justice T S Sivagnanam said, while disposing a batch of appeals, including that by the state government, against the September 14 order.

Even if the determination of the fee structure by the committee is assumed as provisional, the judge had erred in holding that it was violative of the principles of natural justice, the bench said.

After the fee fixation orders had been communicated to individual private schools in May last, in all 6,400 institutions had submitted their objections in June and July.

The institutions had collected the same fees fixed for the previous academic year as for the current academic year.

The bench noted that parents had complained that after the fee structure had been stayed they were being harassed to pay the difference between the fee collected and that originally fixed by respective institutions prior to the fee fixation committee's (FFC) order.

The bench said the 6,400 schools, which had submitted objections to the May 5 order of the FFC, headed by a retired judge of the high court, would be entitled to pursue their objections before the committee, which should consider the same.

Pending consideration of the objections, "these institutions shall not be entitled to collect any further fees than what has been collected by them at the beginning of the academic year in June 2010 i.e. at the rate fixed for the previous academic year 2009-2010", the bench said.

The judges said if the fees collected was in excess of that fixed by the FFC, the excess component should be deemed to be retained as a deposit by the respective institutions till the committee's final decision.

"If any additional fee has been collected by the 6,400 institutions after the interim order in the writ petitions, the same shall also be retained as a deposit and the same shall abide by the final decision to be taken by the FFC."

Regarding the 4,534 institutions which had accepted the order passed by the FFC, the bench made it clear that the institutions would not be entitled to collect any fee in excess of what had been permitted by the committee.