Apna Dal (S) chief demands probe into mid-day meals

| | Lucknow
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Apna Dal (S) chief demands probe into mid-day meals

Sunday, 25 August 2019 | PNS | Lucknow

Apna Dal (Sonelal), an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has demanded a high-level probe into reports of a primary school in Mirzapur district serving salt and nothing else with chapatis to the students as mid-day meal for the past two years.

The probe has been demanded by Apna Dal (S) MLC Ashish Patel, who is the national president of the party and husband of Anupriya Patel, the party MP from Mirzapur. She was Union minister of state in the previous Narendra Modi government.

Videos of children sitting in rows and eating chapatis with salt were uploaded on social media and also beamed by local television channels on Friday. A few staff members at Siyur Primary School at village Hinauta in Mirzapur are also seen in the videos. 

The recommended mid-day meal menu at primary and upper primary schools in the state is rice and/or chapatis, dal, green vegetables and milk or fruit

The Apna Dal leader said this irregularity was going on in the school for the last several years and the district administration and the basic shiksha adhikari (BSA) were responsible for the serious irregularity affecting the children. 

Patel demanded the transfer of the BSA out of the district, saying that “free and fair probe is not possible until the BSA is removed”.

He said many of the children had been quoted in the media as saying this had been their regular mid-day meal at the school since 2017 and that they and their parents had given up hope of it ever changing.

Several officials were suspended after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked the district magistrate of Mirzapur to probe the matter. Those suspended include headmaster-in-charge Murari Lal, Arvind Kumar Tripathi, coordinator for the mid-day meal scheme in Roshnahar nyaya panchayat under which the school falls, and assistant basic education officer Brijendra Singh. The BSA has also been served a notice to explain the lapse.

Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, posted one of the videos on Friday and tweeted in Hindi: “This is how the BJP government of Uttar Pradesh runs the state. Government welfare is worsening day by day. This kind of behaviour with children is condemnable.”

Former chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav described the state government as “insensitive”.

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