New Delhi, August 23: Implementation of the mid-day meal scheme in schools suffered due to in-built deficiencies at “every stage” starting from its planning and the served food lacked in quality as regular inspections of the institutes were not conducted, the CAG has said.
In its audit evaluation of the scheme, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India came down heavily on the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the states for not conducting a base line survey.
“This resulted (absence of base line survey) in adoption of incorrect enrolment by Programme Approval Board for sanction of annual work plan and budget. All this resulted in excess or insufficient allocation of food grains and financial assistance from the government,” the report said.
It said in absence of regular inspection of the schools by the state monitoring committees “the quality of the meals in terms of hygiene, caloric content, micro-nutrient and supplements suffered”.
“As per the guidelines of the schemes, it was to be evaluated independently to ascertain the extent of achievement of its objective from an external agency nominated by the state. However, in majority of the states, this was not done,” the CAG report said.
The report also asked the Ministry to ensure that annual work plan and budget of states are examined by Programme Approval Board, especially with reference to enrolment data which is crucial for allotment of food grains and financial assistance by the Centre.
–Agencies