Savouring milk of Siddaramaiah's kindness

Ksheera Bhagya, the scheme under which school children will get milk for three days in a week was launched on Thursday with chief minister Siddaramaiah offering a glass of milk to a group of students in Hoskote on the outskirts of the city.Over 60 lakh students from standards 1 to 10 in government schools and children in anganwadis will benefit from the scheme. The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) will supply the milk. The project has been launched simultaneously across the state except in Bangalore and Hubli, where it will be launched in due course as NGOs supplying food to schools have sought more time to implement the project. The project will cover over 51,000 government schools and lakhs of children in anganwadis. Each child will receive 150 ml of milk three times a week under the scheme. After inaugurating the scheme, the chief minister said the government would spend Rs 400 crore to implement the project, which would require 7 lakh litres of milk every day. The scheme would benefit both children and farmers, he said. “We have introduced the scheme in government schools to fight malnourishment,” said Siddaramaiah . He said the KMF that would supply the milk for the programme had begun receiving 55 lakh litres of additional milk a day after the state government increased incentives to farmers by Rs 4 per litre.