Newindpress
Bangalore, Apr 3: It looks like the State Government has finally given in to the pressure of religious heads in the State on the mid-day meal scheme.
It has dropped its proposal to serve eggs, bananas and milk to the primary school students in the State.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister Basavaraj S Horatti told this website's newspaper that the government had decided to drop these for this academic year and the amount allocated for this would be utilised for the mid-day meals of high school students.
The government had to face severe criticism from the religious heads and other minority communities for providing eggs to students as egg is ‘non-vegetarian.’
Hence, the government decided to drop out eggs and instead supply milk to the students. This too did not work out as the cost of tetra packs worked out too expensive for the government as the price for each pack came up to nearly Rs 4 and supply through cans seemed not a good idea either.
Banana was another option but the government was still undecided. The government has decided to provide mid-day meal for the high school students.
“The National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, has suggested the appropriate quantity of food required for high school students,” said Rajanna DS, joint director, mid-day meals scheme.
According to National Institute of Nutrition, the amount of food required per day for a student in the age group of 14 to 16 is 150 gms of rice, 20 gms of pulses, 10gms of oil and fat and 75gms of vegetables.
Those in the age group of 6 and 14 per day requires 100gms of rice, 20 gms of dal, 3 gms of oil, 2 gms of double fortified salt, 50 gms of vegetable, 450 calories and 12gms of protein. The cost incurred by the government per child per day is Rs 1.61 and the total budget allocated for this scheme is Rs 330 crore.
The Centre has decided to give 100 gms of rice to class 6, 7 and 8 students in 61 educationally backward blocks of the state. In addition, it is also giving the same amount of rice to students of class 1 to 5.