New Delhi: The possibility of providing mid-day meals even during school holidays should be explored, a top HRD ministry official said today in reference to the recent death of a Jharkhand girl allegedly due to starvation.
The official said while it has been established that the 11-year-old girl was not being denied mid-day meals, it was true that she could not avail its benefits during the period that preceded her death due to school holidays.
"Can we think of some initiative for the poorest of the poor wherein we can provide them mid-day meals even during holidays?" Rina Ray, special secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, asked.
Under the mid-day meal scheme, every enrolled child, aged 6-14 years and studying in classes 1 to 8, is provided hot cooked meals having certain notified nutritional standards.
The scheme comes under the HRD ministry's Department of School Education and Literacy. Ray was speaking at a day-long conference here on implementation of the National Food Security Act, 2013, in relation to children, lactating mothers and pregnant women, organised by the National Human Rights Commission.
She conceded that any such move might have huge financial implications and that many schemes run by her department were already suffering from "severe financial crunch".
Activists and the Jharkhand girl's mother, Santoshi Kumari, have alleged that she died of starvation as her family's ration card was cancelled due to non-linkage with Aadhaar, a unique identification number.
Officials, however, claimed that the girl, a resident of Jharkhand's Simdega district, died of malaria.
Touching upon the contentious issue of Aadhar seeding, the HRD official emphasised that it was "not mandatory", even as she flagged concerns on leakages due to ghost enrolments.