The State government has reduced spending on undernourished children from ₹162 per child in 2016 to ₹159 in 2017, a Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed.
The RTI plea was filed by former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi. Mr. Gandhi had sought to know three things: the number of malnourished children in the State as per the last two counts; the amount budgeted for the current and last financial year to alleviate malnutrition, including that for energy dense nutritious food; and the amount spent in the last financial year and the current year until November.
The reply to his application shows that in the last two years, the government has not spent even a single rupee of the ₹10 crore per year allocated for alleviation of malnutrition in children.
A report presented by the State Women and Child Development Department to the Bombay High Court had said that in Melghat alone, an average 500 children die every year. In 2013-14, the number rose to 600, and in 2014-15 another 426 children died in just two blocks of Melghat. When the HC was hearing a PIL on the matter, an RTI query had said that in 2015-16, as many as 283 children died in Melghat — and around 17,000 in the entire State — due to malnutrition.
