Lucknow, December 27, 2015: Sri Rajnath Singh, Honourable Minister of Home Affairs; Government of India served food to children here after visiting the Akshaya Patra Foundation’s kitchen facility in Lucknow. He visited the Lucknow Kitchen to grace a function hosted by the Foundation to celebrate one complete year of operation in Lucknow. Also present at the occasion were, Sri Ashutosh Tandon, (MLA, Lucknow East) and Mr Sharda Pratap Shukla, (MLA, Sarojini Nagar).

Sri Rajnath Singh was given a tour of the Lucknow facility where he witnessed operations of the centralised kitchen facility serving food to74,000 school children in 758 Government schools in Lucknow. Addressing the occasion, Shri Rajnath Singh praised the Foundation’s noble service towards society in continually endeavouring to eliminate hunger by providing nutritious mid-day meals to millions of school children in India and highly acknowledged Akshaya Patra’s burning will to reach out to more number of school children with time.

“Feeding empty stomach is big service to God. Akshaya Patra is doing this service which, for me, is the biggest service to humanity. Not everyone gets this opportunity and when one organisation is doing this service, we would help it so that it can feed more empty stomachs.”

He further added that for good education, nutritious meals are an imperative for school children. “The mid-day meal scheme is a step forward in this direction and organisations like Akshaya Patra are playing an important role in achieving Government’s resolve of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.”

Madhu Pandit Dasa, Chairman, the Akshaya Patra Foundation extending a note of thanks to Sri Rajnath Singh said, “I am grateful to the Honourable Home Minister Sri Rajnath Singh for graciously consenting to visit our centralised kitchen facility and participating in feeding mid-day meals to school children at Lucknow and his constant support through the years. With his continued support and encouragement, we are confident that we can reach out to more children and serve them with nutritious mid-day meals every school day.” 

The state-of-the-art kitchen facility in Lucknow is spread across two acres of land which is assigned to the Foundation by the State Government. This is Akshaya Patra’s second centralised kitchen in the state. It is funded by the Caterpillar Foundation that has sponsored the entire set up of this automated kitchen infrastructure. The facility has the capacity to produce 60,000 rotis (flat bread), 10,000 litres of daal (lentils) and 7 tonnes of cooked rice within two hours. The mechanised kitchen is equipped to achieve high standards of quality and hygiene in all processes.

At present the Lucknow kitchen is serving wholesome lunches to 74,000 school children in 758 schools with plans to soon serve mid-day meals to about 1 lakh school children in the near future.