Tardy pace of funds utilization for midday meal scheme

Reflecting poor implementation of the mid-day meal programme, an official report has said about 63 per cent of the funds have been utilised during the first quarter of the current fiscal, with only seven states utilising more than 90 per cent of the money.
While 100 per cent fund utilisation has been reported from Maharashtra, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Daman and Diu, the report of the HRD Ministry said states such as Sikkim, Jharkhand, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand Kerala and Tamil Nadu utilised less than 50 per cent of the funds.
The states were allocated Rs 5597.97 lakhs under the management, monitoring, evaluation component in April-June this year but only Rs 3493.83 lakhs were utilised.

At the national level, the programme also saw a drop of 4 per cent of the enrolled children as compared to the first quarter last fiscal, with the enrolment standing at 71 per cent.
The coverage in Uttar Pradesh stood at only 48 per cent while it was 53 per cent in Chandigarh, 54 per cent in Jharkhand, 55 per cent in Delhi, 63 per cent in Bihar, 67 per cent in Gujarat and 69 per cent in Odisha among others.
Chandigarh, Punjab and Bihar, however, reported good progress in inspection of schools by states, district and block level officials with more than 75 per cent of the schools being inspected during the first quarter.