Ruckus in Bihar Assembly over mid-day meal tragedy

Legislators on Tuesday created ruckus in the Bihar State Assembly over the serving of contaminated mid-day school meals.

A majority of the representatives rejected the the statement put forward by former state deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Modi criticised the state government and Bihar's Education Minister P.K. Shahi for claiming in a news conference that the meal was deliberately poisoned under the orders of Arjun Rai, the husband of suspended headmistress Meena Devi.

Earlier on Monday, legislators of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brought proceedings to a standstill over the issue.

The children fell ill within minutes of eating a meal of rice and soybean-potato curry in their one-room school on July 16, vomiting and convulsing with stomach cramps. Many died, some on the floor of a hospital where they went for treatment, within hours of consuming the food.

Forensic tests showed the meal was contaminated with monocrotophos, a lethal pesticide banned in many countries. Police have said the headmistress is key to solving the mystery of how the pesticide ended up in the food.

The pesticide that killed the schoolchildren last week is a nerve poison banned by many countries because of what the World Health Organisation (WHO) describes as its "high acute toxicity".