Jharkhand Opp grill govt over name of mid-day meal plan

Opposition in the Jharkhand Assembly pulled up the state government over its Sarswati Vahini Madhya Bhojan Yojna to be launched in the coming financial year. As per Governor M. Rama Jois’s speech on the inaugural day of the session on February 7, the Yojna entails setting up of Sarswati Vahini Samiti comprising the mothers of students for providing ‘‘nutritious and cooked food’’ to them in each primary school in Jharkhand.

The Congress, RJD, CPI, CPI-ML, Marxist Coordination Committee and the JMM members sat in the well of the House and shouted anti-government slogans in protest against the inclusion of ‘‘Sarswati’’ in the name of the scheme. The Congress termed it as ‘‘saffronisation’’ of education. The other parties joined in.

‘‘They (BJP Ministers) have been running Sarswati Shishu Mandir. Now they want to use the name of Sarswati to communalise school education. Couldn’t they have named it something like the Abhibhawak samiti,’’ asked CPI-ML MLA Mahendra Singh.

Speaker Inder Singh Namdhari observed that the Congress government had used the name of late prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru to name Centrally-sponsored projects, like Jawahar Rozgar Yojna and Indira Awas Yojna.