UP Govt is not providing this meal in Mid-Day Meal Scheme.

Claim

Mid Day Meal of Government School of Uttar Pradesh. Had this happened in any school in Delhi, headlines would have been made in international newspapers

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Explanation

Popular right winger Arun Yadav and Vishwa Hindu Parishad Leader (VHP) Sadhvi Prachi had shared a picture of  a boy, in their social media profiles, holding  a plate with various food items. The items include an ice cream, an apple, paneer, cucumber, roti, and a juice. This was captioned with a message that this is a meal provided as part of Uttar Pradesh’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme. Later, this became viral leading to many people into believing that this is actually UP’s mid-day meal menu.

What’s the truth ?

First, we started with finding out what is actually the official menu of Uttar Pradesh. It is uploaded on the UP’s mid day meal scheme website.

There is a huge difference between the actual menu and what is shown in the picture that is being shared on social media. We reverse image searched the viral photo and found a Facebook page in the name of Amit run by the village head of Malakpur, Jalaun in Uttar Pradesh. The meal is part of the Add-on scheme to the existing menu of the UP Government. This Add-on Meal is called Tithi Bhojan and as per this scheme, any individual or a community can contribute and sponsor food to the students.

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Malakpur’s Village Head Amit and the teachers of the Malakpur School had used this scheme to provide the particular meal in the picture and uploaded the picture on Facebook on 31st August 2022 along with 2 other photos. In one of the photos, the school children can be seen holding a placard wishing “Saurabh” on his birthday and thanking for the meal. We can see similar photos of children eating a good meal and thanking the sponsors for the meal as we go through Amit’s timeline.

Hence it is very clear that this meal is not provided by the Uttar Pradesh Government as part of the mid-day meal scheme. This is not a state wide scheme uniformly followed in all schools across the state. We have to also note that there are various allegations about the quality of the midday meal food in Uttar Pradesh and there are even alleged instances of rotis served just with salt.

Conclusion

The claim along made with the above shown viral image shared by several right wingers and supporters of BJP about the Mid-Day Meal scheme is fake. Malakpur’s village head Amit and the school teachers had used the “Tithi Bhojan” scheme to provide add-on meals on top of the existing meal plan by the Uttar Pradesh Government and shared the photos on Social Media. The photos included the pictures of the meal provided, school children thanking the sponsors of the meal.

Malakpur’s Amit and the teachers has been doing similar programs for quite some time and updating the same on social media. One such photo from his recent post on August 31,2022 is widely shared on social media to mislead people that the meal in the photo is provided by Uttar Pradesh.

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