Eighty-one per cent of the total number of children enrolled in the Food Security Allowance (FSA) programme are covered by the programme, according to the Ministry of Education data. A total of 9,52,24,169 children in the entire country are covered under the programme, while 117554514 of them are enrolled.
The data was provided by the ministry while responding to an RTI by a medical student Vivek Pandey. All the enrolled students are covered by the programme in six states — Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab and Tripura. Delhi and Lakshadweep also fall under this category.
On the other hand, the worst performers in the list are Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where 62.3 per cent and 62.6 per cent of enrolled students are covered by the programme. While 1,81,93,664 students are enrolled in Uttar Pradesh, only 1,13,30,208 are covered by the programme.
A total of Rs 970004 lakh was released by the ministry to the states in the school year 2019-20. This is an increase of Rs 18,769 lakh from the previous academic year. At the same time, the expenditure in the 2019-20 academic year was Rs 946641 lakh. Despite this, the government maintains that "The overall responsibility for providing cooked and nutritious mid-day meal to the eligible children lies with the State Government and Union Territory Administrations."
