Five arrested after lizard found in mid-day meal

Five people, including the headmaster and two teachers, were arrested in Bihar's Nalanda district after a lizard was found in the mid-day meals served to school children, officials said Friday. In the last three weeks various such cases have been reported in the state.

Bihar's Human Resource Development Minister Hari Narain Singh said that the headmaster and two teachers of a middle school in Basniawa under Harnaut block have been arrested after a lizard was found in the mid-day meal. They were also suspended on charge of negligence of duty.

More than 25 students of the school fell ill soon after eating the mid-day meal Wednesday.

It was not the first such case in Bihar.

In the last three weeks, a lizard was found in the mid-day meal in at least three schools and insects were also found in mid-day meals in different schools in half a dozen districts.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has admitted that there were shortcomings in the mid-day meals scheme being implemented in more than 80,000 schools of the state.

During an all-party meeting over the issue Thursday Nitish Kumar said that he had asked the human resource department to study the scheme's implementation in other states.

Bihar is spending more than Rs.2,000 crore on the scheme.

The mid-day meal scheme is one of the world's largest nutrition-supplement programmes, covering more than a million schools across India. Under it, students in government-run schools are given free lunch. It was launched in July 1995 to tackle the twin problems of dropouts in primary schools and malnutrition among children from poor families.

A latest CAG report said that there was 'absence' of internal controls and 'regular' monitoring in implementation of mid-day meal scheme in Bihar during the year 2007-200.

'There has been complete absence of internal controls, regular monitoring and evaluation of the mid-day meal scheme for children during 2007-08', the report said.link