The Union government has accepted Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s demand to start such an initiative wherein students studying in night school will soon get free meals on the lines of the midday meal, an official from the CMO said on Sunday. The Programme Approval Board (PAB) has recently taken this decision, the official added.
As per the statement issued by the chief minister’s office, the Centrally-sponsored scheme will cover the government-run and aided night-schools.
The midday meal is a Centrally sponsored scheme which provides hot cooked meal to 10.44 crore children at 12.12 lakh schools across the country. Sources from the school education department said that an amount to the tune of `13,215 crore has been provided for the scheme in the current year.
Presently, students from regular schools run by local bodies such as zila parishad, corporations and councils, students from private aided and partly aided schools, from madarasas and maktaba etc avail the benefits of the midday meal scheme. Night schools weren’t beneficiaries of this scheme till now.
An official said, “Due to personal problems, many children cannot attend regular schools. They prefer night school education. But they do not get benefit of midday meal. Therefore, the CM had asked the Central government to start the scheme for night schools also.”
According to a source from CM’s office, PAB of the Central government has decided to include night schools in midday meal scheme and the district education officers across the state have been instructed to implement the scheme.
The midday meal scheme was recently in controversy due to mismanagement in the implementation. According to source from education department, the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry had written a letter to education secretaries of all the states to make an in-depth review of the scheme.
After the Bihar incident, in which 23 students died after eating a midday meal, among other measures, the HRD ministry had instructed that a vigilance and monitoring committee be instituted under the chairmanship of the district’s senior-most MP.