Food Min re-examines proposal on payment for midday meal

After objections from the HRD Ministry, the Food Ministry is understood to be re-examining a proposal according to which the HRD Ministry would have had to make advanced payment before taking food grains for the midday meal scheme.
The Food Ministry had reportedly insisted on advanced payment for procuring food grains from its facilities, but the the HRD Ministry strongly objected to the suggestion, saying the move would hamper smooth implementation of the scheme.
According to sources, the HRD Ministry had also proposed to raise the corpus available with the Food Ministry under the midday meal programme from Rs 300 crore to Rs 400 crore.

As per the prevailing mechanism, payment under the midday meal programme at the district level is done after taking food grains. The Food Ministry's directive would have come into effect from December.
However, on pressure from HRD Ministry, it was re-examining its proposal, sources said.
The midday meal programme is the world's largest school feeding programme benefiting about 12 crore children in over 12.65 lakh schools across the country.
The budgetary estimate for the programme during the 2013-14 fiscal is Rs 13,215 crore.
After the Bihar midday meal tragedy in July this year, the government had announced a series of steps to strengthen the programme with stringent monitoring of the scheme and had issued fresh guidelines for states.