Experts for extending midday meal scheme up to Class XII

Extending the midday meal scheme up to Class XII, starting an urban employment guarantee scheme and coming up with a public distribution system not exclusively linked to Aadhaar were among the suggestions given by experts at a meeting to discuss the Right to Food organised by the National Human Rights Commission on Tuesday. The meeting, which was organised to discuss the status of various policies to ensure Right to Food and nutrition, was chaired by NHRC member Rajiv Jain, said a statement issued by the commission. The secretary of the Department of Food and Public Distribution, Sudhanshu Pandey, said “the real challenge on the ground is using technology for food distribution, but so far the results have been encouraging in identifying the real beneficiaries out of those holding bogus ration cards.” Among the suggestions given by experts and stakeholders were the need to popularise benefits of breastfeeding, regulation of junk food by labelling high sugar and salt content and increasing the coverage of the PDS and Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the food security scheme launched after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “Insistence on Aadhaar card linkage with the ration card is restricting the intent of PMGKAY…With the digitisation of services, the connectivity thereof is an issue in far flung areas, which needs to be looked into to ensure proper distribution to the beneficiaries: Coverage under PDS needs to be increased, as One Nation One Ration Card as of now covers only those whose Aadhaar cards which have been seeded with the PDS; Simplify guidelines and think of a system not exclusively based on Aadhaar and Smart Cards,” the NHRC statement said.