New Delhi: Nearly 250 parents whose wards are studying in various private schools in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad are going to meet Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday morning. The protesting parents said that they have been given time at 9 am by the CM's office after multiple representation and communication to the CM regarding "uncontrolled and illegal" fee hike by schools. The parents are demanding fee control mechanism via an ordinance from the government.

The parents have been protesting against the schools over "unreasonable fee hike." They claim that the schools are increasing the fee annually anything between 10% to 60%. "There is no pattern. The fees are hiked on random basis, without any transparency in the process and neither the schools are stating the real reasons for the increase. While some schools claim that the hike is due to increase in teachers' salary, in reality teachers are getting paid abysmally low," said Shailendra Kumar Singh, a member of the delegation travelling to Lucknow to meet the CM on Sunday.

Alleging that the local administration has turned a blind eye on the grievances of the parents, another parent on condition of anonymity said: "It has been more than a month we have been protesting. We have made representation to the district administration. While the Ghaziabad administration did act against the hike ordering a roll back, the same is not true for Gautam Budh Nagar and we want to appraise the UP government about the dire state of affairs due to the 'private school' mafia."

The parents are demanding a permanent solution to this annual "harassment" and seeking government's intervention towards controlling private school fees via a mechanism which "needs to be implemented across the state in all the private schools," said Singh.