Phatak told mediapersons: “Maybe the students found the strawberry flavour very heavy in taste and therefore had nausea and vomiting. We can continue with the ‘elaichi’ flavour after the Standing Committee decides on the final report.”

Phatak also said that similar incidents were reported from schools in China and Malaysia where tetrapacks of flavoured milk were supplied to students. “After suspending the distribution for a while, the scheme was resumed there as well,” he said.

The civic body had formed a committee comprising of doctors, civic officials from school and food and adulteration departments on December 24 to look into why some students were taken ill after consuming milk.

Although the committee submitted its interim report on Friday to the standing committee, it said that unless the forensic samples from the police were verified the final report could not be submitted.

“It’s a medico-legal case and along with us the police had also taken samples of tetra-packs and gastric lavage (stomach wash of students) and sent it to forensic laboratory,” said Dean, Nair Hospital, Dr Sanjay Oak, who is heading the committee.

Oak said the committee had been requesting the police over the last one week to submit the forensic report. “But they have yet not submitted it and we can compile the conclusions and prepare the final report only after getting the forensic report. We will require additional time to submit the final report,” he said.

The committee inspected the milk processing at G K Dairy in Haryana-which supplies the tetra pack to the students in Mumbai-the preservatives and flavours used, packaging process, transportation facilities, storage in godowns and distribution in schools. The final report would give recommendations on whether to continue supplying flavoured milk to schools and the guidelines to be followed to distribute tetra-packs.

Education budget

Following protests by angry members of the standing and education committees over non-implementation of the full education budget, the civic administration has assured that 90 per cent of the budget allocations will be implemented in the next three months.

Education Committee chairman Mangesh Satamkar said that the civic officials had not been able to implement even 50 per cent of the budgetary allocations. “There are many things to be done for BMC schools but not even half of the budget has been used due to the lackadaisical attitude of the civic officials,” he said.