NEW DELHI: The Akshaya Patra Foundation (TAPF), which daily provided mid-day meals to 18 lakh school students in 12 states and two Union territories, has taken upon itself to provide meals daily to lakhs of migrant labourers, poor and destitute during the 21-day Covid-19 lockdown period.Since the schools are closed during the lockdown period, TAPF - an initiative of Iskcon, Bengaluru, decided to partner governments and local administrations in these 14 states and UTs to provide succour to migrant labourers stuck in trading and industrial towns after the lockdown. "Since March 25, we with associates have provided 1.44 crore meals at various locations till April 10," Bharat Das of TAPF told TOI on Saturday.Coordination with the authorities, making arrangements for cooking food and working out the logistics for distribution of meals were worked out on war footing after the announcement of the lockdown, he said. "We started immediately and fed 43,920 persons on March 26. But, the task was much bigger. We ramped up our resources and fed 23.53 lakh person on April 8," he said.The provision of food at various states and UTs show that the efforts are concentrated at labour-intensive cities. Giving statistics about meals distribution on April 10, Das said TAPF and associates provided cooked food to 600 persons at Vizag, 6,620 at Bhilai, 10,750 at Silvasa, 1 lakh at Surat and 25,200 at Ahmedabad, 19,287 at Ballary and nearly 4 lakh meals or food kits at Bengaluru, 5,069 at Thane and 2,640 at Pune, 48,000 in Delhi-NCR region, food kits for 20,000 at Bhubaneswar, 13,630 at Ajmer and over 1 lakh cooked meals and food kits in Jaipur, 2,000 in Chennai, 21,540 at Kandi in Telengana, 23,450 at Lucknow and 20000 cooked meal and food kits at mathura and Vrindavan TAPF has worked with partners and donors to help disaster relief work across India by partnering with government authorities and supplementing their efforts, Das said. "During the 21-day lockdown period, Akshaya Patra has been aiding governments' efforts bybproviding food relief to vulnerable communities, such as migrant labourers and homeless people. The Foundation is doing this through its network of kitchens, working closely with government of India, state governments and other civic administrations." Prior to Covid-19 pandemic, TAPF was providing mid-day meal to over 8 lakh students in 19,039 schools in 12 states and two UTS.