‘With civic polls in sight, there is pressure from people’s representatives’

There is a sudden spurt in the demand for ₹5-a-meal kiosks from municipalities across the State, apparently due to pressure from MLAs and Ministers concerned with an eye on the ensuing municipal elections.

The demand is also from the newly created municipalities and the apparent reason is to attract the voters. The demand has come from small municipalities, including Shadnagar, Kodad, Jadcherla, Gajwel and Sircilla, apart from large ones including Khammam,Warangal and Karimnagar.

A representative of the Hare Krishna Movement agreed that there was a spurt in the requests to operate the kiosks in several municipalities. As of now, 150 such kiosks are operated in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area. With the new requests, the number is touching 173, while many more are pending.

The ₹-5-a-meal scheme is a huge hit with students and daily wage workers apart from cab drivers in the GHMC area. “The MLAs are now bringing pressure on the municipal officials to start the same in their areas with the elections in sight,” said an official wishing anonymity.

A TRS leader, however, said the demand for new kiosks was not linked to the elections but to the quality food served at such a low price. “So there are requests from small towns and also MLAs to set them up in their constituencies”.

The municipalities subsidise the meal while the Hare Krishna Movement Foundation prepares the food through its Akshyapatra scheme apart from taking care of logistics like transporting the cooked food to the locations.

While each meal costs ₹ 26 for the Hare Krishna Movement, the municipality concerned bears ₹19; the HKM provides a subsidy of ₹ 3 through its donors and ₹ 5 is contributed by the customers. As of now, 55,000 meals are cooked and served every day, said a representative of the HKM.

The HKM is confident of meeting the new requests with its kitchens spread across the State. The kitchen in Narsingi caters to the GHMC area while it also has kitchens in Warangal, Kothagudem and Mahabubnagar. Cooking, packing, transport and serving is taken care of by the HKM with three people in each kiosk. About 200 vehicles are in operation for transportation both ways.

The most popular kiosk is in Ameerpet where it serves 800 plates every day while the kiosk at Hitech city serves around 600 meals. On an average other kiosks serve 250 meals per day.