PATNA, June 5 -- The Patna high court has expressed displeasure over the submission of inadequate counter affidavit by the director of the Directorate of MDM/ PM POSHAN, Government of Bihar, saying it is completely silent on the information the court sought in its May 19 order while hearing the case involving mid-day meal poisoning of around 189 school children on May 7. On the request of assistant counsel to the Advocate General (AG), the bench of Justice Rajiv Ranjan Prasad and Justice Mohit Kumar Shah on Wednesday granted some time to the MDM director to place on record detailed views after due consultation with all the stakeholders and competent authorities. "Let a complete affidavit be filed in this regard within two weeks. The additional chief secretary of the education department and the Directorate of Mid-day Meal shall act in tandem to convene the meeting with all stakeholders within a week," the bench said. The court observed "it strongly doubts that there may be people behind the destruction of the evidence if the food samples found to have decayed" after Saharsa SP informed that the investigation officer (IO) had been suspended for delay in sending the samples. The court made it clear that "mere suspension of the IO, who is at the lowest pedestal in the investigation, would not be helpful to the police administration in getting rid of their responsibility as the supervising authorities of the case also seem to be sitting over the matter." The court directed that the director of regional forensic science laboratory (RFSL), Bhagalpur, be added as party respondent in the case and notice be issued calling upon him to submit his affidavit as to why in such sensitive matter, which involves threat to life of around 189 children, the laboratory has not tested the samples so far. "It prima facie appears from the director's affidavit that in almost 80% of the schools, the kitchen facilities are available in the school itself and the same is being run through cooks and helpers under the guidance of the Vidyalaya Shiksha Samiti. The government guidelines clearly provide that every school shall have the facility for cooking meals in a hygienic manner. The facility of centralised kitchens has been envisaged only for the purpose of leveraging efficiency gains in a viable cluster of schools, for which the director has admitted there are no clear guidelines," the bench observed. The Court directed the competent authority/ stakeholders to take a view as to why the kitchen facility in the school itself should not be given priority over any other mode of supply, as the director's affidavit admits there are no clear guidelines for identifying the clusters. "Let all the stakeholders and the competent authorities involved in implementation of the MDM scheme sit together within a period of one week from today and take an appropriate view of the matter keeping in view the government policy of having a cooking meal facility in every school. The committee shall find out the modalities for running the kitchen in every school," the court said. It also asked the committee to consider if at all a centralised kitchen facility is to be continued, and how the viable clusters of schools are to be identified and what would be the volume of work which may be appropriately assigned to an agency for supply of meals to the schools. The court took exception to mere suspension of the IO in the case after Saharsa SP informed that the action was initiated after finding that the officer delayed sending samples to the RFSL. When the SP informed that prima facie it appeared that the food samples which were collected by the IO were denatured, as per the experts' opinion, the court cautioned him not to introduce something at this stage which is not there in the report of the expert while collecting the samples and it might have got denatured due to delay in sending the samples. The court found it at variance, as it was not stated by the expert in his report during the previous hearing of the case. "We are afraid that this statement is being made for the first time at this stage even as this Court has noticed in its May 19 order that the expert prepared the samples marked 'A, B, C & D' very clearly, with 'A' having suspected food sample collected from the plate containing small snake," the bench said, directing the SP to take appropriate view of the matter as to at what level of the different authorities the failure has taken place.....