The Madras High Court on Thursday held as “capricious, perverse and arbitrary,” a decision taken by the State government in August last year to stop calling for a State-level single tender to procure eggs required for the noon meal scheme implemented in schools, and instead go for a zone-wise tender by dividing the State into six zones.
Justice R. Mahadevan allowed a batch of writ petitions filed against the decision and said: “Every activity of the government has a public element in it and it must therefore be informed with reason and guided by public interest. The government cannot act arbitrarily and without reason. If it does, its action would be liable to be invalidated.” Tracing the history of noon meal schemes, the judge said, it was first introduced by the Madras Corporation in 1925 before being followed by the Pondicherry government during the French administration in 1930.
In 1962-63, the then State of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) pioneered the full-fledged noon meal scheme implemented in primary schools. The scheme was developed over the years and included supply of eggs as an essential component of the meal on all working days. In 2006, the State stopped the State-level single tender system and decided to procure eggs through district-level tenders but the new methodology ended up promoting cartels in supply of eggs.