**Bhubaneswar: ** In a surprising finding of facts, the mobile app and SMS based application which was introduced in December 2016 to check loopholes and ensure proper distribution of mid day meal scheme in the State showed tag there was distribution of mid day meals on the festival of Holi, when all the schools in the State were observing holiday.
In this scheme, headmasters or teacher in-charge of MDM scheme will send information through SMS on the number of students present, number of students served food, reason for not serving food, money and food availability with each of the schools and also the weekly consumption of IFA tablets in a tollfree number 15544.
The data is then analysed in block, district and state level every day to check any kind of discrepancies or irregularities. Earlier, MDM data was reported on a monthly basis.
“They upload it around 11 am to 11:30 daily. It is then monitored accordingly. Some of the service providers which we avail are not able to pass the information the same day due to slow network. It reaches us the next day. We have asked the service providers to block the network after a specific time to overcome such difficulties,” explained Gangadhar Sahoo, State Nodal Officer, Mid-day Meal Scheme.
There are over 46.71 lakh children who take mid day meal on a daily basis on working days. There are about 62,784 kitchens where the food is cooked.
The massive scheme has run into controversy over quality of food and hygiene standards apart from pilferage.
