The Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme for primary school children in Tamil Nadu was extended to all government schools from Friday, the first time any state will provide breakfast to all primary-section pupils in addition to midday meal.

Chief minister M.K. Stalin announced the expansion of the breakfast scheme, meant for students from Class I to V, at the government primary school in Thirukkuvalai, Nagapattinam district. He served Pongal to children, sharing breakfast and interacting with them.

Stalin had launched the first phase of the breakfast scheme for primary school children on DMK founder C.N. Annadurai’s birth anniversary, September 15, last year to cover over 1.14 lakh children studying in 1,545 schools. This has now been expanded to cover 17 lakh primary students in 31,000 government schools across Tamil Nadu. This year’s budget has earmarked Rs 500 crore for the expansion.

“This is a golden day which is poised to transform the educational scenario in the state,” Stalin said at the programme to mark the occasion at Thirukkuvalai, the birthplace of his father and former chief minister M. Karunanidhi.
Earlier, Stalin visited the kitchen of the school to check the quality of the food being served.

The chief minister pointed to the five-fold objective of the breakfast scheme — “to ensure that children attended school without hunger, reduce the incidence of malnutrition among children, enhance the nutritional status of children, boost the attendance and retention of children in schools and decrease the burden on working mothers”.

While the midday meal scheme for school children in the erstwhile Madras Presidency dates back to 1922 under the then Justice Party government, it was started to initially cover children studying in corporation schools in old Madras, Stalin recalled.

After Independence, the scheme was progressively expanded in terms of area coverage, number of schools and nutritional content under the successive regimes of K. Kamaraj, M. Karunanidhi, M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa.

However, during a visit to a government school in Chennai last year, Stalin said he was shocked to know from children that many of them did not even have breakfast before coming. This impeded children’s enthusiasm to learn and stunted their mental growth. “That is when I decided to launch a breakfast scheme for all primary school children and I pushed hard for it despite the state’s severe financial constraints,” he said.

The breakfast scheme will complement the midday meal scheme, the chief minister said. More than any financial allocation, this is “an investment in human resources” that will translate into quality outcomes in the education sector, Stalin explained.

A study by the state planning commission has found that in the first phase of the breakfast scheme implemented since September 15, 2022, on an average there had been a 30 per cent increase in attendance in 1,319 of the 1,545 primary schools in January-February 2023, compared to June-July 2022.

Court verdict

AIADMK general secretary and former chief minister Edappadi K. Palanisamy got a major legal relief on Friday with Madras High Court declining to interfere with his election to the top-most post of the party in the wake of a bitter factional feud.

The court also refused to interfere with the expulsion of former coordinator of the AIADMK and ex-chief minister O. Panneerselvam and three of his supporters from the party through a special resolution passed at the AIADMK’s July 11, 2022, general council in Chennai.