Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday launched the expansion of the state government's breakfast scheme for school children at Tirukkuvalai in this district. The CM served food to the children at a school here and also joined them for breakfast.

In Chennai, his son and cabinet minister Udhayanidhi Stalin launched the scheme's expansion. The Chief Minister had earlier said order had been issued on June 7, 2023 to extend the breakfast scheme to all the 31,008 government primary schools, across urban and rural Tamil Nadu, aimed at benefiting 15.75 lakh primary students.

Already, 1.14 lakh students in Classes 1 to 5 in 1,545 government primary schools are provided breakfast on all working days under the Chief Minister's Breakfast Scheme.?The government has embarked on expansion considering the excellent outcome witnessed in the preliminary phase. The aim is to ensure children attend school without hunger, it said.

Stalin had invited elected representatives to launch the plan's extension in a government primary school in their respective constituencies. In his Independence Day address, the CM had announced the free breakfast scheme's expansion.

On September 15, 2022, launching the breakfast scheme in Madurai, Stalin, quoting the late Periyar E V Ramasamy, C N Annadurai and M Karunanidhi had said nothing -be it poverty or caste- should be an obstacle to access education.