Why 1 egg per week, not 5, in midday meal, Supreme Court asks Bihar government

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has asked the Bihar government why it has been providing just one boiled egg a week to school children under the midday meal scheme when it had ordered all governments in drought affected states to provide egg or milk five days a week.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna issued notices to the Bihar government and the Centre on Friday on a PIL filed by NGO ‘Veterans Forum For Transparency in Public Life’, which said Bihar had received below average rainfall for the last three years and 23 districts were declared drought affected.The SC sought their responses in four weeks.
The petitioner said the Nitish Kumar government had violated the SC’s May 2015 judgment in ‘Swaraj Abhiyan’ case, in which it had directed governments in drought affected states of Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to immediately make “adequate provision for supply of eggs or milk or other nutritional substitute” for children under midday meal scheme. “Eggs, milk or any other nutritional substitute should be given preferably five days in a week or at least three days in a week,” advocate Rabin Majumder said.
Despite the severity of the drought and in utter violation of the SC’s judgment, the Bihar government on October 20, 2017, had directed all district programme officers to provide one boiled egg or seasonal fruit only on one day of the week. The NGO said it had petitioned public authorities for the last two years but no remedial steps were taken.