Patna:
The Bihar government today denied receiving any alert from the Centre over shortcomings in its implementation of the mid-day meal scheme. 23 children died after being poisoned by the free lunch at their school in Chhapra on Tuesday. The state government insists that the food was 'poisonous'.
"No such alert was issued to us. In the meeting of project approval board, a study by A N Sinha Institute of Social Science and Jamia Milia University had pointed out that in many places standard of hygiene was not maintained on which the government acted promptly," Amarjeet Sinha, Principal Secretary, Education, said today.
Accompanied by Director, Midday meal programme, R Lakshamanan, Mr Sinha said based on the studies, the state government in April had held training sessions for principals and cooks to maintain the standard of food hygiene.
Earlier in the day, Union Minister MM Pallam Raju said warnings were issued to 12 Bihar districts, including Saran where the tragedy occurred, after some shortcomings in the implementation of the programme were identified.
Mr Sinha repeated the remarks made by Education Minister PK Shahi, who had told the media yesterday that the food was poisonous due to the presence of organic phosphorous.
The case seemed to be one of poisoning of food and not food poisoning, Mr Shahi had said.
"Insecticide was mixed in large quantity in the oil used for cooking food or it seems that the food was cooked in the insecticide," Mr Sinha said today.
"The report of the laboratory test of the food is expected tomorrow which will give a final verdict over the issue," he said.