From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
 
Bangalore, Nov 19: Assembly elections in Karnataka are due in April-May next year.

But the Jagadish Shettar-led BJP Government in Karnataka will be supplying milk and eggs.

The beneficiaries, however, are not voters.

The beneficiaries of the State Government’s move to supply milk and eggs are young children in the age group of 3 to 6 years.

Obviously, the ruling party mandarins must be confident that the parents and their relatives, who are the actual voters, can be ''influenced” if their children are taken care of and provided with nutritional milk and eggs!

The State Women and Child Welfare Department has come up with the proposal of supplying milk and eggs to as many as 37 lac children in the age group of 3-6 years in all the 65,000 aganawadi centres in the State.

Women and Child Welfare Minister Kalakappa G Bandi told reporters on Monday that he would submit the proposal to the Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar for clearance.

The green signal from the Chief Minister, who also holds the finance portfolio, is a must as the total cost of the proposal would be a whopping Rs 230 crore annually.

The minister explained that the Department was currently feeding six lac malnourished children with milk and eggs across the State.

The Department wants to supply 700 ml of milk to all 37 lac children (3-6 years) in 65,000 anganwdi centres across the State.

While milk would be supplied daily, Bandi said there was no concrete proposal on providing eggs and also the number of days in a week that the children would be supplied eggs.

If the proposal is implemented, it would cost the state exchequer Rs 230 crore annually, he said.

The Government would buy milk powder from Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) and convert it into milk as it would eliminate the problem of transporting milk and also help the KMF to utilize its surplus milk by producing milk powder.

Bandi said the Deputy Commissioner in the respective districts have been given powers to decide menu in each district to ensure supply of region specific food to children.

The Department has increased the expenditure incurred to construct an anganwadi building from Rs 4.19 lac to Rs 10.80 lac.

Out of 65,000 anganwadi centres in the State, the minister said barely 27,000 have their own buildings.

To construct good buildings and provide clean surroundings, the construction cost of the centres has been increased, he said.

Apart from construction of buildings, money would be spent on construction of toilets and compounds and providing electricity connections, he said.

A sum of Rs 30 crore would be spent to construct buildings in the current financial year.