Midday Meal Scheme

rdf:langString Midday Meal Scheme

rdf:langString Students receiving mid-day meal at a school in Wokha district of Nagaland state

rdf:langString India

rdf:langString Active

rdf:langString Mid-day meal scheme logo.jpg

rdf:langString Government of India

rdf:langString The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme in India designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in government primary and upper primary schools, government aided Anganwadis, Madarsa and Maqtabs. Serving 120 million children in over 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, the Midday Meal Scheme is the largest of its kind in the world. The Midday Meal Scheme has been implemented in the Union Territory of Puducherry under the French Administration since 1930. In post-independent India, the Midday Meal Scheme was first launched in Tamil Nadu, pioneered by the former Chief minister K. Kamaraj in the early 1960s. By 2002, the scheme was implemented in all of the states under the orders of the Supreme Court of India. The name of the scheme has been changed to PM-POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) Scheme, in September 2021, by MoE (Ministry of Education), which is the ministry responsible for the scheme. The Central Government also announced that an additional 24 lakh students receiving pre-primary education at government & government-aided schools would also be included under the scheme by 2022. Under article 24, paragraph 2c of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a party, India has committed to yielding "adequate nutritious food" for children. The programme has undergone many changes since its launch in 1995. The Midday Meal Scheme is covered by the National Food Security Act, 2013. The legal backing to the Indian school meal programme is akin to the legal backing provided in the US through the National School Lunch Act.