Chandigarh, Nov. 6 -- Taking a cue from Tamil Nadu, the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government in Punjab is mulling a proposal to provide milk and bananas for breakfast to more than 18 lakh children in government schools across the state. The proposal to provide one glass of milk (150 grams) and one banana daily to every child in pre-primary and elementary classes, in addition to the midday meal, is currently under consideration at the highest level in the state government, officials familiar with the discussions said. The officials said the aim is to provide adequate nutrition to children to improve their health and also to prevent school dropout. Punjab has approximately 1.60 lakh children in Bal Vatikas (kindergarten), 10.8 lakh in primary (classes 1 to 5), and 6.5 lakh in upper primary (classes 6 to 8) in 19,640 government schools across the state. Discussions on providing breakfast to schoolchildren began after chief minister Bhagwant Mann's visit to Chennai in the last week of August. At the invitation of his Tamil Nadu counterpart, MK Stalin, Mann attended a function organised for the inauguration of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's Breakfast Scheme for government schools in urban areas across the state. Mann, who was the chief guest at the function, lauded the initiative and told Stalin that he would also consider a breakfast scheme in Punjab after consulting his cabinet colleagues. Tamil Nadu was the first state to provide breakfast to government school students in primary classes in September 2022. Following this, the school education department was asked to submit a proposal. According to an official, the breakfast scheme will cost the state exchequer approximately Rs.800 crore annually. "The government intends to start providing breakfast from the next academic session. This may be started from primary classes or in a phased manner. Once the approval is granted, we will start making arrangements. We already provide seasonal fruit (mostly bananas) to schoolchildren once a week as supplementary nutrition," he said, requesting anonymity. A few states, including Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Kerala, and Gujarat, have been requesting the central government to consider providing breakfast under the PM-POSHAN scheme, citing the recommendation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in this regard. At present, freshly cooked mid-day meals such as dal-chapati, rajma-rice, black/white chana-poori, seasonal vegetable with chapati, and karhi-rice are provided to these children under the centrally-sponsored Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman Scheme (PM Poshan), earlier known as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. On average, 81% of enrolled students availed the mid-day meals in schools across the state during the 2024-25 academic year, prompting the central government to express concern over the coverage of the free lunch scheme. While the state government was asked to look into reasons for low coverage, a school education had attributed this primarily to absenteeism and some children choosing to skip the school meals....