Irregularities in ICDS
Anganwadi Services is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme and the administration, management and monitoring of the Scheme is the responsibility of the State Governments/UT Administrations. Accordingly, if any complaint is received, the same is forwarded to the concerned State/UT for examination of the issue in the light of extant rules/regulations/guidelines of Anganwadi Services and thereby taking appropriate action under intimation to the MWCD.
Revamping of Anganwadi Scheme is a continuous process for which various steps have been taken from time to time which are as follows:
(i) Joint guidelines have been issued by Ministries of Women & Child Development, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj for construction of AWC buildings across the country under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in convergence with Anganwadi Services.
(ii) Streamlined guidelines have been issued on 13.01.2021, covering several aspects such as quality assurance, roles and responsibilities of duty holders, procedure for procurement and integrating AYUSH concepts and Data management.
(iii) Ministry of WCD has conceptualized a digital platform,” Poshan Tracker”, a robust ICT enabled digital platform, launched in March, 2021 to ensure real time monitoring of provisioning of supplementary nutrition by use of data analytics for prompt supervision and management of services, tracking of all AWCs, AWWs and beneficiaries on defined indicators. States/UTs are also submitting progress reports on the implementation of Anganwadi Services to this Ministry.
(iv) Mission Poshan 2.0 (Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0) announced in budget 2021-2022 is an integrated nutrition support programme, to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition.
This information was given by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
