The Congress in Telangana is playing with the lives of children in Gurukul or residential government schools. There is no better way to say this. At this point, it’s difficult to even keep track of food poisoning incidents in the state.
Close to 50 students have died in Telangana due to food poisoning since 2024, and it is shocking how this has flown under the radar. While the BRS has been critical of the state government over the incidents, the issue has now even reached the National Human Rights Commission. It sought a report on the matter after complaints were heard on the issue during an open hearing in Hyderabad on 28 and 29 July.
The government seems to have decided that children in the state do not need to get quality food and nutrition. For a state that was formed a decade ago on the promises of a bright future, this is a terrible thing to even read about.
I have nothing against the Congress personally, before anyone attacks me for saying I am biased. But it has been over a year and a half since the party won the 2023 state Assembly elections, and it is time they are held accountable for things.
Promising more and providing almost nothing seems to have become its leitmotif. The chief minister has in the past said that his government is broke, that it has no money to run the state. So I can only wonder if the state administration is cutting corners by compromising the quality of food given to students.
Keeping aside electoral promises, the government is currently unable to contain the situation. On 25 July, about 100 girls at a government Backward Class Residential School in Nagarkurnool district fell sick due to suspected food poisoning. Before that, on 20 July, close to a dozen students from the Morgi Model School hostel in Sangareddy district fell sick after eating dinner.
Similarly, on 14 July, around 40 students at an Ashram Gurukul school in Nalgonda district were hospitalised for food poisoning, while students of the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) in Vikarabad district even staged a protest inside the school premises over insects and worms allegedly being found in their food.
These incidents were all just from July. Every month, there are at least a handful of such cases. It is shocking that the state government has kept mum and barely moved to tackle the issue.
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A worrying pattern
The government should have taken this very seriously and addressed the matter last year itself when C Shailaja, a 16-year-old tribal student, fell critically ill from food poisoning and died at the government-run NIMS Hyderabad on 25 November. She was one among the 60-odd students who fell sick due to food poisoning at the Wankidi Tribal Welfare School in Kumaram Bheem-Asifabad district of the state.
While the state government did form a food safety committee to probe into the increasing number of food poisoning cases in government-run schools, nothing seems to have come of it. The government ordered the formation of institution-level food safety committees and district-level task force committees on 27 November.
Food poisoning incidents are still continuing unabated. While the Opposition BRS has taken the matter to the state high court, the state government should address the issue on its own.
The matter is even more alarming because all of the affected students are from government schools for marginalised communities (ST/SC and Backward Classes), and this sets a very bad precedent in governance.
We can live with bad roads, bad governance, bad infrastructure, bad management, but we cannot live with a state where its children are being poisoned at the very educational institutes where they seek a future. So before more lives are lost, I hope the CM wakes up and takes note of these alarming incidents.
Yunus Lasania is a Hyderabad-based journalist whose work primarily focuses on politics, history, and culture. He tweets @YunusLasania. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)