According to Kartick Chandra Manna, chairman of the Kolkata Primary Education Council, of the total 1,134 city primary schools under the Kolkata District Primary Council, only 128 have a provision for providing cooked midday meals to its students.

“The schools in Kolkata are mostly housed in rented spaces and it is not possible to cook food in such small areas,” said Manna.

He added that the government has decided to give additional grants for construction of kitchen shade, which will help in the expansion of the project.

Officials with the Kolkata Primary School Council (KPSC) said that while the number of students in the 1,134 schools is nearly 1l,99,000, only about 25,000-30,000 of them get cooked midday meals.

Food is not cooked in all the 128 schools, but prepared in the community kitchens of certain schools and distributed to other places, The Indian Express has learnt. In 10 of these schools, the midday meal programme was started only in the last week of January this year.

A report on midday meals in urban primary schools, published recently by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Trust, paints a similar grim picture.

After assessing all the schools under the Kolkata Primary Education Council and Kolkata Municipal Council, the report claims, 69 per cent are yet to come under the purview of the scheme, while 74 per cent students have no provisions for midday meals.

“There is no doubt that the enrollment in primary schools has increased after the implementation of midday meal scheme. In our school, children come from very poor families and to them the midday meal is a great succour and serves as an impetus to continue schooling,” said Bhimsen Biswal, headmaster, Sastriji Harijan Vidya Mandir in Kolkata.

“The non-implementation of the scheme at the primary level is found to be higher in districts with higher urban population,” the Pratichi report mentioned referring to districts like Kolkata, South and North 24-Parganas, Burdwan and Nadia.

The non-implementation of the scheme is also forcing many schools to close down with students staying away. In 2008, the number of primary schools under KPSC was about 1200, now the figure has reduced to 1134.

Kumar Rana, co-ordinator of the Pratichi Trust report, said: "The urgency and relevance of serving midday meals at different levels is beyond question. Its inadequate coverage the urban schools of Kolkata is a matter of serious concern."