Restrictions on for-profit education in India mainly stem from Supreme Court verdicts, Model and state Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Rules, and board affiliation norms.
For both, K-12 and higher education, the following two court judgements regulate the ability of educational institutions to run for-profit.
Unnikrishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, 1993: The Court established education as a symbol of charity and disallowed educational institutions from engaging in “profiteering.”1