Aadhaar-linked mid-day meal scheme to check malpractices: Javadekar

Hailing the government's move to link Aadhaar card with mid-day meal scheme, Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday said it has been initiated to check malpractices and bring in transparency.

Javadekar said the motive is to ensure that children are not devoid of mid-day meal.

"We only want to check malpractices, the bogus registration of students and siphoning away funds of mid-day meal scheme," Javadekar told the media here.

The HRD Minister said that a large number of beneficiaries already have the Aadhaar, adding facilities would be made to enroll the remaining students as well.

"We want to bring transparency and want children to get mid-day meal. But we don't want fraudulent activities to take place under its garb," he said.

"As far as mid-day meal and Aadhaar link is concerned, I have made clear in Parliament that no genuine student will be denied mid-day meal in any case, only on the ground that they don't have Aadhaar. We will give mid-day meal scheme to all students and also Aadhaar card to all students," he added.

Javadekar further informed that there was no genuine student in the first instalment of inquiry but bogus students were registered.

"4,40,000 bogus students were identified who actually didn't exist but their names were registered," he said.

The HRD ministry made the unique identification number mandatory earlier this month for the students in order to avail mid-day meal scheme.