After the Prime Minister office (PMO), it is the turn of the planning commission to reject union minister for state for women and child development Renuka Chowdhury?s continued effort to introduce micronutrient fortified food instead of hot cooked meals, provided to around 8 crore poor children and women through integrated child development services (ICDS).

Terming Chowdhury?s proposal as ?retrograde?, a planning commission project appraisal committee in a recent report has said that it also constitute violation of Supreme Court?s directive that ready to eat food should be served under ICDS.

ICDS, launched in way back 1975 focusses on providing supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check up, pre-school education, nutritional and health education to children below 6 years, pregnant women and nursing mothers through anganwadi centres (AWC) in the rural areas.

Supreme Court in a case public interest litigation filed by people?s union of civil Liberties (PUCL) back In 2006 had directed the centre government to scale up ICDS programme by setting up minimum of 14 lakh AWCs. The apex court had directed that the contractors shall not be used for supply of nutrition in AWCs? and had recommended for involvement of village community, self help groups, mahila mandals for buying grains and preparation of meals.

Rejecting the WCD ministry proposal, the planning commission has said ?the objective behind ICDS should not simply to provide a small nutritional additive but to ensure to the child coming to anganwadi gets atleast one full meal.?

The commission even said that if ready-to-eat micronutrient fortified food is supplied instead of locally cooked food, ?it would expose the children to the risk of extra and may be excessive doses of micro-nutrient if fortified locally causing a serious health hazard.? The planning commission report has also expressed the fear that it may either lead to centralised procurement and distribution.

In a recent meeting of national nutrition mission chaired by Renuka Chowdhury again has advocated setting up a task force comprising of experts for looking into various aspects of micronutrient fortification for drastically improving the health of women and children in rural areas.

The planning commission report also pointed out that the ministry has incorrectly suggested that the government intends to stop providing subsidised rations at below poverty line (BPL) rates for the schemes.

?Planning commission is of the clear view that foodgrains from the PDS will be available at BPL rates for ICDS. We have no information or proposal before us for any change in the existing arrangements,? it said. It also said that ICDS has to be implemented in a decentralised manner with decentralised procurement.

The PMO also recently urged the WCD ministry to ?delete any provision that would interfere with the continuance of current arrangements in those states that have already introduced hot cooked meals and delete any references to the issue of supplementary nutrition that transgress the extent of the Supreme Court?s ruling.

The national common minimum programme (NCMP) aims at unversalising the ICDS programme through providing functional anganwadi in every settlement and full coverage of all the children.

The 11th five year plan outlay for ICDS has pegged at Rs 51400 crore and during the current fiscal an amount of Rs 6300 crore has been allocated for ICDS.