HRD Ministry had praised mid-day meal scheme in Bihar

Barely a week before the mid-day meal tragedy struck a school in Bihar, HRD Ministry had praised the state for its implementation of the scheme on various counts.
On July 8, Additional Secretary in the Minister Amarjit Singh had said Bihar had made "tremendous improvement" in implementation of the scheme.
Singh, in a letter to the state governments, had cited the example of Bihar along with Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka as the states which had showed improved performance during the 2012-13 fiscal.
However, HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju today said "shortcomings" had been found in its implementation and "alerts" had been sent to 12 districts including Saran where the incident took place.

"Bihar has improved tremendously on this front although the coverage of children in the state is still below the national average," Singh said, adding the coverage had gone up to 67 per cent from 43 per cent last year.
The performance in these states, he said, has been analysed on the coverage of the children with respect to enrolment, coverage of working days, utilisation of food grains, cooking cost, transportation assistance and payment of honorarium to cook-cum-helpers.

Appreciating the work of the mid-day meal team, he said the appreciable efforts have led to increase in coverage of the scheme to 10.68 crore children during the fourth quarter of 2012-13 from 10.46 in the third quarter.

Raju, on the other hand, said today alerts were issued to 12 districts in the state including Saran, where the tragedy has unfolded after some shortcomings in the implementation of the programme were identified.
"Yes, apparently there has been. There were 12 districts that were identified and alerts were sent and Saran (hit by the incident) was among them, he said.
He, however, said they do not wish to highlight the issue right now and play a blame game over it as the death of the children have shocked all.