Aamir unites divided House on need to fight malnutrition

Amid a standoff between the Treasury and Opposition benches over the setting up of a JPC on 2G spectrum scam.

Amid a standoff between the Treasury and Opposition benches over the setting up of a JPC on 2G spectrum scam,which has paralysed the functioning of Parliament

for the past 14 days,young parliamentarians cutting across party lines,joined by actor Aamir Khan on Wednesday,called on top leadership of the ruling and opposition parties to make a common cause on the issue of malnutrition.

Under the banner of Citizens Alliance against Malnutrition,formed about three years ago,these MPs along with personalities from the media and art world have been making surprise visits to remote villages in different states to make on-the-spot assessment of the implementation of government schemes like mid-day meal and aanganwadi centres.

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Joined by Aamir Khan and lyricist Prasoon Joshi on Wednesday,they called on PM Manmohan Singh,Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar,Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi,among others,to apprise them of their initiatives.

According to Union Minister Sachin Pilot who is actively involved in this advocacy group,the PM emphasised the need to strengthen the delivery mechanism and assured them that he would take up the issue at the next meeting of the National Development Council (NDC).

We work as an oversight monitoring advocacy group. We are going to target 200 worst malnutrition-affected districts and see what is needed to tackle it in terms of funding,availability of workers and quality of food, said Pilot.

The Citizens Alliance includes about 100 parliamentarians across party lines like Supriya Sule of the NCP,Shahnawaz Hussain of the BJP and Jay Panda of the BJD.

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I am happy that all political parties are united on this basic issue and hopeful that they will remain so, said Aamir Khan.

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