Scraping one more scheme of the previous Congress regime, the BJP government in Rajasthan is planning to provide coarse grain instead of milk to the school children.
State Education Minister Madan Dilawar Explains About Why The Decision Was Taken
Education Minister Madan Dilawar said that not all school students are getting the benefit of Bal Gopal Yojana. Keeping this in mind, the Education Department is considering giving millets to school students instead of milk.
“There are a large number of school students in Rajasthan who do not want to drink powdered milk, while It is not possible to provide quality cow milk to all schools. Looking at this, giving millets instead of milk is being considered,” said Dilwar.
Providing milk to school students was a scheme first launched by Vasundhara Raje during her last tenure. Under the scheme, the milk was provided by the Rajasthan Cooperative Dairy Federation.
After the change of regime, former CM Ashok Gehlot amended the scheme and instead of milk, the students were provided powdered milk, and the scheme was named Bal Gopal Yojana. Under this, more than 69 lakh students of up to 8th standard were given milk made from milk powder as part of midday meals in schools.
Now, BJP is again in power in the state and this time the instead of amending, the scheme of providing milk is being scraped.
The education minister Dilawar said, “The BJP government of the state does not want to see children malnourished. We want to keep school students healthy by providing them food items instead and Soon a final decision will be taken regarding this scheme.”
Notably, Rajasthan is the biggest producer of Millets in the country and government procurement of Millets is a major political issue in the state. The previous governments were not procuring the Millet as consumption was a major problem. With the scheme of providing Coarse grains to the school children, the state government would be able to use the procured Coarse grains.
