Eggs will be removed from mid-day meals served in government and aided schools in Kolkata after the West Bengal government announced that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness would provide cooked food under the scheme, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday.

Radharaman Das, the Kolkata spokesperson of the Hindu religious organisation, said that the meals would not contain eggs but would instead include ingredients such as paneer, rajma, soybeans, pulses and other vegetarian protein sources.

“We have empanelled dietitians to curate our menus,” The Times of India quoted him as saying. “We will ensure that whatever nutrients a child gets from eggs will be matched or exceeded by the superior quality protein and vitamins in our meals.”

Das said that the programme would be implemented through ISKCON’s Annamitra Foundation. He added that the organisation was awaiting a list of schools from the government, and planned to set up kitchens to prepare and distribute the cooked meals.

Under the existing arrangement in West Bengal, students are usually served eggs once a week, with rice, dal and potato curry on the remaining school days.

Some schools have also occasionally arranged chicken or fish through additional funds raised by teachers. Students who do not eat eggs or follow vegetarian diets could choose other food options.

However, the new arrangement will introduce a vegetarian menu.

Das said that ISKCON was already operating similar mid-day meal programmes in more than eight states and 22 cities, and had been serving about 12 lakh students nationwide.

In other states such as Karnataka and Odisha, the ISKCON-linked Akshaya Patra Foundation, which runs government mid-day meal programmes, has faced criticism from Right to Food activists for excluding eggs, onions and garlic from its menus in line with the organisation’s religious dietary principles.

On Wednesday, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien said that the BJP government was depriving children of nutrition by removing eggs from the midday meals. The Rajya Sabha MP said that the Hindutva party was “imposing vegetarianism” and that the state “rejects this”.

The mid-day meal scheme, which is officially known as the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education, was launched in August 1995 to boost universalisation of primary education, while improving nutrition levels of children.

The scheme simultaneously lays emphasis on providing cooked meals with minimum 450 calories, between eight and twelve grams of proteins, and adequate quantities of other nutrients. The 2013 National Food Security Act made the mid-day meal up to Class 8 a legal right.

State Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta had announced in his Budget speech on Monday that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness would provide cooked meals in schools in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area.

Dasgupta also said that the material cost for mid-day meals in primary schools would increase to Rs 10 per student from Rs 6.7 per student, The Times of India reported. It would remain unchanged at Rs 10.2 per student at the upper primary level.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

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