Eggs to go off mid-day meals menu in Karnataka schools

The Karnataka Government’s move to serve boiled eggs along with the mid-day meals in Government primary and secondary schools across the State has been temporarily kept in abeyance in the wake of vehement opposition from Jain pontiffs, who have threatened to launch a hunger strike.

A day after the pontiffs threatened to launch a hunger strike in front of the Parliament over the issue, Deputy Chief Minister B S Yediurappa called up the Education Department officials and asked them not to go ahead with plans to serve eggs with mid-day meals to the students.

The Government’s scheme of supplying eggs to non-vegetarian students and bananas to vegetarian students along with mid-day meals was scheduled to be formally kicked off by Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy in Mandya on January 23.

According to the latest decision, the Government will neither serve eggs nor bananas to students along with mid-day meals till the issue is amicably resolved.

Out of the 5.35 million students studying in various classes from standard I to VII in Government primary and secondary schools in Karnataka, as many as 4.98 million students had opted for eggs while the remaining 371,000 odd students had preferred bananas.

Though the opposition is only against serving of boiled eggs, Education Department officials are understood to have convinced the Government against serving bananas as well. “How could one section of students be served bananas while the rest go without anything except for the regular mid-day meals?”, an Education Department official is believed to have reasoned.

The Government had decided to include eggs and bananas in the mid-day meals to supplement the nutrition. But, the state-wide protests against the move by pontiffs, Jain community leaders and pontiffs forced the Government to keep the proposal in abeyance for the time being.

Though there was a proposal to provide students with milk, the idea was dropped in view of the high costs involved in procurement of milk, heating and adding sugar, besides the possibility of adulteration.

But, Education Department officials have cited the example of Tamil Nadu, where the Government provides two eggs a week to students under the MGR Nutritious Meal Scheme.
Though the proposal to provide eggs in mid-day meals had met with a similar uproar in Tamil Nadu during 2002, the Government temporarily replaced eggs with potatoes, but reintroduced eggs later.