The national Mid-Day Meal Scheme in government and aided schools popularly will now be known as PM POSHAN Scheme and will also cover students of balvatikas or pre primary classes, the government announced Wednesday.
Encouraging "Tithi Bhojan" to allow people from community to provide special food to children on occasions and festivals, using harvest from "school nutrition gardens" for cooking mid-day meals, cooking competitions to promote ethnic cuisine and innovative menus and involvement of Farmers Producer Organizations (FPO) and Women Self Help Groups in implementation of the scheme, are among the features which have been added in the new scheme.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the roll-out of the 'PM POSHAN in Schools' scheme that will provide hot cooked meal to students of elementary classes in government and government-aided schools across the country. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The CCEA has approved the continuation of the national scheme of PM POSHAN in schools for the five-year period 2021-22 to 2025-26 with the financial outlay of 2 54061.73 crores from the central government and 31733.17 crore from state governments and union territory administrations.
With inputs from PTI.
