Three months into academic year, Cong Govt in Telangana fails to provide nutritious breakfast in schools

On several occasions, KTR criticised the ruling party for stopping the breakfast scheme meant for economically weaker students studying in the government schools

Hyderabad: It has been three months since the commencement of new academic year. Yet, students in the government schools are being deprived of nutritious breakfast.

This is due to the Congress government failing to issue directions to schools asking them to resume the scheme.

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“This academic year, we did not receive any direction from the government to provide breakfast to students. So schools are not providing breakfast,” said an official source.

On several occasions, BRS working president KT Rama Rao criticised the ruling party for stopping the breakfast scheme meant for economically weaker students studying in the government schools.

The Congress government is learnt to be now looking for alternative resources to fund the scheme which the previous BRS government took care as Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme and provided adequate funds.

Deviating from past practices, the Education department held discussions for roping in donors and corporate companies under the corporate social responsibility to financially assist the scheme.

Further, the government is also considering rechristening the scheme and restart it in Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s Kodangal constituency. After the success of the pilot project in Kodangal, the government intends to expand the scheme to schools across the State.

The previous BRS government launched the Chief Minister’s Breakfast scheme to ensure that students in the government schools do not start their day on an empty stomach. It was also aimed at providing nutritious food besides eradicating anaemia particularly among girl students.

In fact, several schools have reported an increase in student attendance after the launch of the scheme.

Initially, the scheme was launched in 119 government and local schools with one school in each assembly constituency in October 2023.

Later, it was expanded to 3,500 schools and the government had planned to extend to all the 27,147 schools in a phased manner, benefiting 23 lakh students. For this, the previous BRS government allocated Rs. 672 crore.

The breakfast menu included idli and sambar, wheat rava upma, puri and alu kurma, tomato bath, upma, rice rava khichdi, millet idli, pongal, uggani, poha, and millet Idli.

However, after a change in the government, the scheme was stopped.

“Since the start of the academic year 2024-25, schools have not provided breakfast to students. The government has not cleared the previous bills for providing the breakfast,” said a school teacher.