HRD Ministry faces fund crunch for LPG cylinders for mid-day meals

NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry will have to set aside at least Rs 650 crore for the non-subsidised LPG cylinders required for the children's mid-day meal programme, a tricky task given that its budget for school education has been cut by Rs 3,200 crore this fiscal.

The finance ministry has, however, assured it that it will "make good" from next fiscal the extra expense, necessitated by the government's new LPG cylinder pricing policy.

"The finance ministry has said that for this financial year, the department will have to use unspent funds from other heads in the school education department's budget to pay for the additional LPG cylinders," a senior HRD ministry official said. "However, from the next financial year, the extra money required will be provided for in the annual budget."

The mid-day meal scheme is the government's largest school feeding programme, providing nutritious meals to 12 crore children across 12.65 lakh schools and education centres in the country.

The budgetary allocation for the programme in the current fiscal is Rs 11,937 crore, of which Rs 653 crore was to be spent on LPG cylinders obtained under "the non-domestic exempted category at the rate available to subsidised domestic consumers".

Even without the 7% cut in allocation, the ministry would have found it difficult to source the extra funds required to pay for the LPG cylinders. After the petroleum ministry turned out the HRD ministry's plea to exempt the mid-day meal programme from the government's policy of limiting subsidised LPG cylinders to six per school, Human Resource Development Minister MM Pallam Raju had taken his request for additional funds to Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

"The immediate worry is to ensure that the quality of the mid-day meal isn't compromised. We have written to the state governments to assure them that the ministry will not let the programme suffer," Raju said. Raju had said that in the event the finance ministry refused to provide additional funds, his ministry would arrange for it from its own resources.