India, March 14 -- Patients and relatives from two of the city's key hospitals - KEM Hospital and Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) - are struggling to get adequate nutritive food, as free meals distributed by charitable groups have begun to shrink, amid the growing uncertainty around the availability of LPG.

Hitesh Yadav, 36, a resident of Varanasi, who has been living on the footpath outside the civic-run KEM Hospital where he is seeking treatment for asthma, said the daily quota of four chapatis in his meal box was reduced to one since Thursday. "Fortunately, the quantity of rice and vegetables have not been reduced. However, while we received freshly cooked food five times a day from different groups earlier, it has now reduced to three,"...