If the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025, passed in August, was a declaration of intent to insulate private school managements, the Rules notified on December 10 are the operational manual for that protection.Education Minister Ashish Sood has termed the notification a historic moment for transparency. However, a close reading of the 62-page document reveals that the government has constructed a labyrinthine bureaucracy. It transforms the right to affordable education from a guarantee into a procedural privilege available only to the most organised and resource-rich parents.The Rules do not fix the fundamental flaws of the Act; they cement them with the mortar of legal formalism.The audit illusionWhen the Bill was first tabled, observers noted the conspicuous absence of the word “audit”. Rule 9 of the new notification has introduced it, but in a manner that serves the management rather than the public.The Rule mandates that fee proposals be supported by “duly audited financial statements”. Crucially, these are not audits by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) or a government-appointed independent body. They are to be certified by a Chartered Accountant (CA) registered with the ICAI (a compulsory requirement to call oneself a CA in any case).Also read: How Dalit Students’ Board Exam Fee Went From Rs 50 To Rs 2,100 in DelhiIn the political economy of private education, the question arises: who pays the auditor? The answer is the school management. When the auditor is a client of the management, the report risks becoming a commodity rather than a verdict. The Rules effectively replace public scrutiny with a privatised validation process. The promised “transparency” is merely that of a ledger written by the management’s own hand.The logistics of dissentThe Act had already barred individual parents from appealing against fee hikes, demanding an “Aggrieved Parents Group” comprising at least 15% of the total parent body. Rule 11B has now instrumentalised the logistics of this requirement.To file an appeal, parents must submit names, ward details and enrolment numbers. The Deputy Director of Education is tasked with “verifying” this data against official records. This procedure places an onerous burden on parents to organise hundreds of people without access to the parent directory, data which is held exclusively by the management.Furthermore, by compelling parents to submit their identities to the Deputy Director for verification, the Rules create a de facto registry of dissidents. In an environment where school managements hold significant power over students, handing a list of names to a bureaucracy often porous to influence is an act of significant risk.The optics of the lotteryRule 4 doubles down on the performative nature of the School Level Fee Regulation Committee (SLFRC). It mandates that the selection of parent representatives by a “draw of lots” be video-recorded in the presence of a government “Observer”.Also read: Explained: The Delhi Government’s Bill to Regulate Private School Fees Is No Victory for ParentsThis prioritises optics over substance. The process of selecting the powerless is made hyper-transparent to obscure the fact that power within the committee – the Chair and the Secretary – remains permanently fixed with the management. The presence of the Observer (Rule 5) is equally deceptive; their role is to “oversee”, not adjudicate. They are witnesses to a structural imbalance, granting state legitimacy to a rigged process.Legitimising asset accumulationPerhaps the most troubling aspect is the formal recognition of “Development Fees” and “Depreciation Reserve Funds” under Rule 3 and Rule 3A.Rule 3(d) allows for a Development Fee of up to 15% of tuition, while Rule 3A(g) mandates a depreciation fund. In plain economic terms, the current generation of parents is being legally compelled to pay for capital assets, buildings and furniture owned by the Society or Trust running the school. The Rules convert parents into involuntary investors who bear the cost of capital accumulation but receive no equity in return. The “non-profit” label slips here; this is rent-seeking codified as regulation.The fine print of impunityThe notification introduces four additional dimensions that function less as regulations and more as containment strategies.First is the ‘status quo’ loophole. Rule 8 (ii) states that if a school fails to submit a fee proposal by July 31 of an academic year, the result would be the automatic continuation of the previously approved fee structure “without any escalation”. While this appears punitive, it serves as an exemption. Many private schools sit on large surpluses accumulated over years.By simply not submitting a proposal, they avoid the mandatory audit and committee scrutiny entirely. Here is how it can happen. Rule 12 mandates an annual filing of audited accounts. However, Rule 9 (i) links the scrutiny of these accounts specifically to a ‘proposal for fee revision’. So, if a school decides under Rule 8 (ii) not to submit a proposal, it triggers an ‘automatic continuation’ of fees.Delhi Education Minister Ashish Sood addresses a press conference, April 7, 2025. Photo: PTI/Arun SharmaThis bypasses the School Level Fee Regulation Committee’s mandate under Rule 7 (i) to scrutinise the fee structure against the accounts. The school files the audit, but nobody checks it to determine the fee. And in this way, Rule 8 (ii) incentivises silence, sanctifying the status quo without investigation.Second is the legalisation of economic segregation. Rule 3B allows for “Earmarked Levies”, user-based charges for specific services such as smart labs or horse riding, calculated on a “no-profit, no-loss basis”. This validates the commodification of the curriculum, risking the creation of a tiered system within the student body: those who can afford the ‘smart lab’ and those who cannot. Without a forensic audit to look beyond just balance sheets of schools to detect whether the expenses charged for specific services are not artificially inflated, the “no-profit” clause is virtually unenforceable.Also read: After Delhi Government’s Show-Cause Notice, Schools Ask Parents to Collect Fee RefundsThird is the commodification of adjudication. Rule 15 (xi) entitles the Chairperson of the Revision Committee (a government nominee) to Rs 10,000 per sitting, capped at Rs 2 lakh per month. To reach this cap, the adjudicator must hold 20 sittings a month. This creates a perverse economic incentive to prolong disputes rather than dismiss frivolous appeals or deliver swift justice. Justice delayed effectively becomes revenue generated for the adjudicator.Fourth, Rule 18 (vii) mandates that monetary penalties imposed on schools be remitted to a state account for “regulatory purposes”. While the school is punished, the victim, the parent, is not compensated. This creates a moral hazard where the State benefits financially from the existence of rogue schools, using parents’ grievances to fund its own operations rather than creating a corpus for restitution.The conveyor belt of delayFinally, Rule 13 institutes a complex chain of referrals from the School Level Committee to the District Committee, and finally to the Revision Committee.Procedural delay is a known tactic of the powerful. By the time a fee hike travels through this three-tiered bureaucratic conveyor belt, the academic year will likely be over. Rule 13 (iv) explicitly states that until a final order is passed, the school continues to collect the previous year’s fee. While this sounds protective of student interests, it incentivises managements to ensure that the baseline fee is set as high as possible, as that becomes the default revenue stream during years of litigation.The notification of these Rules confirms that the state has abdicated its role as the provider and guarantor of education. It has, instead, reduced itself to a regulator of a market – an ineffective one at that. By burying grievance redressal under mounds of paperwork and verification protocols, the government has ensured that while the process may appear transparent, it barely conceals the exploitation of parents and wards.This is a follow up to the earlier report from when the bill was passed, which can be read here.