During an all-party meeting over the issue Thursday Nitish Kumar said that he had asked the human resource department to study the scheme's implementation in other states.

Bihar is spending more than Rs.2,000 crore on the scheme.

The mid-day meal scheme is one of the world's largest nutrition-supplement programmes, covering more than a million schools across India. Under it, students in government-run schools are given free lunch. It was launched in July 1995 to tackle the twin problems of dropouts in primary schools and malnutrition among children from poor families.

A latest CAG report said that there was 'absence' of internal controls and 'regular' monitoring in implementation of mid-day meal scheme in Bihar during the year 2007-200.

'There has been complete absence of internal controls, regular monitoring and evaluation of the mid-day meal scheme for children during 2007-08', the report said.