Belagavi zilla panchayat has started distributing dates and bananas to students fasting during Ramzan.
As per an order issued by the chief executive officer R. Ramachandran, staff in around 400 government Urdu medium schools are distributing dates and bananas to students on fast during the holy month of Ramzan.
Of the 4,080 government schools in the district, 400 schools teach in Urdu medium. Students from economically weak Muslim households attend these schools. Since the students are fasting, no midday meal is served in these schools. Some community leaders and teachers requested the government to use part of the midday meal funds to distribute dates and bananas to students, following which the order was issued.
The zilla panchayat provides midday meal to around six lakh students in the district every day. Of them, an estimated 60,000 students are in Urdu schools, where midday meal is neither prepared nor consumed during Ramzan. “We are using 10% of the grant to distribute dates and bananas to the students of the Udru schools,” said Millanatti Basavaraj, education officer in-charge of the midday meal scheme.
