Centre to send team to review implementation of midday meal scheme in West Bengal

Central teams will visit various schools in the state this month to monitor the quality of food in mid-day meals after a snake and lizards were found in the midday meals served at two schools in Birbhum and Malda districts last week.

The teams will also inspect the kitchen infrastructure in the schools, the procurement of rice, pulses and other food used in the midday meals, the stocking methods and all issues related to mid-day meals. A joint review meeting will be held with the state government. Around 85,000 government-run schools in the state are covered under the mid-day scheme.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who visited Bengal on Saturday, said that the central government will soon send teams to review the implementation of the midday meal scheme in different parts of West Bengal.


A snake was found in the mid-day meal served at Mandalpur Primary School in Birbhum district of West Bengal last week, following which the students were rushed to a local hospital for medical check-up.

The West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR) team had visited the school on Thursday and the headmaster of the school was served a show cause notice. A school staff, who cooked the mid-day meal, claimed that a snake was found in one of the containers that contained the lentils.

A day after, a lizard was found in the midday meal in Malda's Chanchol, which created a furore. Malda district magistrate Nitin Singhania had ordered a probe and stringent action was taken against Ujjwal Kumar Saha, the headmaster of the school in Bidyanandapore, Abdul Hanif, the Education Supervisor, and a contract worker Swapna Roy.