In a distressing incident, Nearly 70 students from Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in Durga Park, Delhi, have fallen ill after consuming the mid-day meal provided by the school. The students of classes 6-8 started complaining about vomiting and stomach aches after having the meal, which drew the attention of the authorities towards the meal. The meal was immediately stopped from being distributed further after the complaints. Puri sabzi along with soya milk was served to the students, and it is alleged that the soya milk which is served has exceeded the expiry date.

After the complaints by the students, they were immediately taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital and Dada Dev Hospital in Dabri for a check-up. There, the senior doctor said that the students were stable now and were recovering at a good pace; earlier they were facing dehydration due to vomiting.

DCP (Southwest) Manoj C has said that they received the call on PCR at around 6 p.m. regarding the case, and his team has reached the spot to take the sample of the food to investigate the future. The Delhi government has issued a warning to all the food distributors regarding the quality of the food and has said that the guilty will be punished. Strict action will be taken against them.

Earlier this week, a similar incident took place, and in this incident, the BJP government said that Education Minister Atishi and Arvind Kejriwal both owe an answer to it, as they have not learned anything from their past mistakes.

The mid-day meal was started soon after independence in the 1960s by the government to provide nutritious food to the children and ensure regular attendance by them. Later the scheme was renamed the POSHAN scheme.

Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to introduce this scheme. The first school that had the scheme was the Sourashtra Boys Higher Secondary School, Madurai, which implemented it in 1955. On November 28, 2001, the Supreme Court asked all state governments to begin this program in their schools within 6 months. The program has shown many positive effects. Many parents who couldn’t send their children to schools due to poverty were eager to get their children free nutritious food, and this incentivized them to send their children to school.

-Varuni Gupta