No mid-day meal sans Aadhaar
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 15 2017:
Government schools' students of the State who do not submit Aadhaar card will no longer be able to get mid-day meal .
According to a source from the State Education (S) department, Aadhaar card has been made mandatory for school children to avail mid-day meal following strict instructions from the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry .
The Ministry has been making Aadhaar mandatory for mid-day meal scheme in its attempt to stop many Government schools from several malpractices like showing non-existent/fake students on their rolls .
There have been reports that authorities of primary and upper primary schools under the State Govt and District Councils have inflated/exaggerated the number of students enrolled, made false claim/report that mid-day meal was served without actually serving, showed non-existent/fake students on the rolls to claim additional funds from the mid-day meal scheme allocation, the source said .
As such, process for collecting Aadhaar numbers of students has been initiated.
Aadhaar numbers of students in Govt and Private schools will be collected and uploaded in a single system.
This will help in easy identification of students who have availed mid-day meal or not.
Collection of Aadhaar numbers of students in the valley has been almost completed while the process has been started in the hill districts.
Target of December 31, 2017 has been set for completion of Aadhaar number collection .
In Manipur, there are 1.65 lakh primary school students as of now under the Education Department and District Council while the number of students in upper primary school is 42,000.Out of this, 1.6 lakh students are presently said to be covered by mid-day meal scheme, according to the Education (S) Department .
The number of students covered under mid-day meal scheme is likely to come down to about 1.2 /1.3 lakh students when the Aadhaar cards of students are collected and stored in a single system.