The Telangana government on Friday launched the “Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme” for all school children studying in government schools besides those being run by the panchayat raj institutions.

State minister for information technology and industries K T Rama Rao launched the scheme at the government high school, West Marredpally, in Hyderabad and shared the breakfast with the students.

Addressing a gathering after launching the scheme, KTR said the innovative scheme, the first of its kind in the state, would benefit 2.3 million students in 27,147 government and panchayat raj schools across the state. The scheme was launched at a cost of around Rs.400 crore.

“The breakfast is very nutritious, and it tastes very good,” KTR said, adding that he had asked the officials to ensure that the food quality was maintained and that random samples were collected to test the quality frequently and regularly.

Stating that a similar scheme in Tamil Nadu is being implemented for school children of Classes 1 to 5, KTR said a team of officials who had gone to Tamil Nadu to study the model had come up with a better model. “Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wanted that the scheme be implemented for students up to Class 10 in Telangana,” he said.

The minister said the objective of the scheme was to ensure that students whose parents go to work early in the morning should not come to schools and attend classes on empty stomachs.

The scheme would also address the issues of malnutrition among the children, besides improving the enrolment of students in the schools, he said.

State finance and health minister T Harish Rao, who launched the scheme at the Zilla Parishad high school in Raviryala village of Rangareddy district, said the CM Breakfast Scheme was a revolutionary step in improving the nutritional standards of the students.

“In most government schools, the students are from low-income groups and they cannot afford nutritional breakfast. The scheme will help parents send their children to school on time without worrying about their food,” he said.

State education minister Sabitha Indra Reddy, who also took part in the programme, said the scheme would bring down the dropout rates in government schools.

“During a meeting with the officials recently, I was told that only two out of every 10 students have breakfast while the rest come to school on empty stomachs. The scheme will go a long way in helping the poor students have healthy and nutritious breakfast,” the education minister said.

The nutritious breakfast would be served every morning 45 minutes before the commencement of the classes. The menu comprises idli and sambar or wheat rava, upma and chutney on Mondays; puri and aloo kurma or tomato bath on Tuesdays; upma and sambar or rice rava khichdi on Wednesdays; millet idli and sambar or pongal and sambar on Thursdays; poha/millet idli and chutney or wheat rava khichdi on Fridays, and pongal and sambar or vegetable pulao on Saturdays.