A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) just exposed some pretty serious financial and administrative mess in how Odisha runs the PM-Poshan (Mid-Day Meal) scheme. Wrapping up in March 2023, the audit uncovered a troubling pattern: schools claimed to have served meals to way more kids than actually showed up. The New Indian Express reports that the CAG looked at 642 schools across five districts during 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2022-23. Out of those, 42 schools inflated their daily consumption registers way past the real student attendance.
In these 42 schools, the numbers got juiced up by 82,270 fake meals for primary kids and 1,36,546 for upper primary students. All that padding meant officials skimmed off resources—extra rice worth ₹9.12 lakh disappeared, plus cooking costs ballooned by another ₹14.33 lakh. It gets worse: the audit called out schools in Muniguda—specifically Denguni and Ambadhuni—for claiming ₹3.05 lakh in expenses and using up 55.94 quintals of rice, even though they had zero working infrastructure during this period.
But it wasn’t just about the numbers. The report showed a real collapse in safety and financial transparency, too. In Mayurbhanj’s Paikabasa area, for instance, headmasters funneled a food security allowance of ₹1,19,562—money meant for 179 students—straight into their own bank accounts. The audit also spotted hygiene problems in 25 schools and pointed out that teachers in 35 schools skipped the required step of tasting meals before handing