Delhi HC issues notice to centre over nutritional value of mid-day meal
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre on the issue that nutritional value of mid-day meal given to school children was far below the stipulated norms.
A division bench of Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog sought a response from the Human Resource Development Ministry by November 6. The court’s direction came after advocate Ashok Agarwal said the Delhi government wrote to the Centre that the menu of mid-day meal was not meeting the nutritional norms.
The affidavit said, “After changing the testing method from ‘dry basis’ to ‘wet basis’, which is a more stringent way of checking the quality, samples have not been meeting the prescribed norms of nutrition.”
The state government in December 2011 wrote to the Centre asking what should be the prescribed method for testing the food sample. It said that after the incidents of illness of children after eating mid-day meals, first information reports had been lodged against the NGOs which had been providing food in these schools.
