Delhi govt pulled up over midday meals

Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi has been pulled up by the HRD ministry for allegedly not conducting single districtlevelcommitteemeetings to review the midday meal scheme in the state.

To review and monitor the scheme, states have to form district-level committees chaired by the senior-most Lok Sabha MP. Delhi has seven MPs.

In the programme approval board meeting held in March, the HRD ministry had “observed that no district level meeting was conducted in any district under the chairpersonship of the seniormost MP of Lok Sabha although there are seven MPs in Delhi”.

According to existing instructions of the ministry, the district magistrate/district collectors concerned are supposed to convene the committees once in a quarter.

The Delhi BJP said the AAP government had deliberately not convened the meeting as it would be chaired by BJP MPs and the shortcomings would be raised.

“This is not the only case where the Delhi government is not allowing a mandatory supervisory committee to work. The situation is the same in the health department too where the medicine distribution committees have not been distributed,” said a Delhi BJP spokesperson.

The DLC meetings are to be convened periodically to review and monitor the implementation of all schemes and programmes of the department of school education, including mid day meals.

In the meeting, the Delhi government pointed out that discrepancies had been noticed during inspections of the centralized kitchens where food is prepared.

For instance, it was found that food containers were transported without proper sealing, double fortified salt was not used, cooks were not wearing head gears, aprons, gloves and uniforms, only a few fly-catchers were available in the kitchens and CCTVs were not operational.

In 2014, then HRD minister Smriti Irani had written to all MPs, asking them to be part of committees set up to monitor the midday meal scheme to address complaints of poor food and corruption.