– Reshma Ravishanker

As many as 578 government and aided schools across Karnataka have not been serving eggs to children six times a week as per government mandates to meet their nutritional needs, a survey has found.

According to an acknowledgement by the Department of School Education and Literacy, surveyors of the Azim Premji Foundation visited atleast 762 aided and government schools between October 2024 and March 2025. While the state government mandates that eggs must be included on all six days for children who consume it, most schools gave them only thrice a week.

In a reminder, the director, PM Shakti Poshan Nirman said that the issue of irregular supply of eggs to children has been brought to their notice. Schools must serve eggs six days a week to students who consume them and bananas to students who prefer otherwise.

However, it was noticed that the School Development and Monitoring Committees of some schools unanimously decided that eggs would be served thrice or twice a week and students would be given bananas on the other days notwithstanding the government order.

“APU has submitted a report to the government in this regard. After reviewing this, we would like to reiterate that it is not ethical for SDMC to choose to distribute eggs only twice or thrice even if it is with the consent of some parents. SDMC is not allowed to take such decisions on its own initiative. In the implementation of the programme must be overseen by school principals, all the concerned supervisors at the cluster level, taluk level and district level of the department. Failing to notice such cases within their jurisdiction and not correcting such wrong practices amounts to dereliction of duty and neglect of the interest of the programme. As a result, the nutritional support programme to the students will be severely hampered,” the government reminder said.

The government has also warned action against supervisors who fail to implement the same.