UP Cracks ₹18.5 Lakh Mid-Day Meal Scam in Balrampur; Portal Manipulation Under Probe

Massive Fraud Uncovered in Mid-Day Meal Scheme

A large-scale scam involving the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) portal has been unearthed in Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur district, where officials say fraudulent entries and manipulated attendance records helped siphon off public funds. The estimated fraud currently stands at ₹18.5 lakh, though investigators warn the figure may rise as a deeper audit progresses.

The probe was initiated following irregularities flagged in monthly reports, prompting a district-level inquiry. Officials soon discovered discrepancies between the number of meals recorded on the portal and actual student attendance in schools.

Fake Students and Inflated Attendance at the Heart of the Scam

Early findings indicate that several schools allegedly reported ghost students—names that did not exist in physical registers— but were regularly shown on the MDM portal as having consumed meals.

Investigators say that in certain schools, attendance figures were inflated by 30%–50%, dramatically increasing the number of meals claimed and reimbursed. The fraudulent entries were reportedly made using authorised login credentials, suggesting the involvement of insiders with administrative access.

Such manipulation directly impacts government funds allocated for food grains, cooking materials and service costs, potentially depriving genuine students of resources meant for their nutritional support.

How the Portal Was Misused

The scam appears to revolve around systematic misuse of the state’s digitised MDM reporting interface, which requires schools to upload meal distribution data daily.

• Data operators allegedly made fabricated entries showing higher student presence.
• Meal counts were updated even on days when schools remained partially closed.
• Officials suspect shared passwords and improper access control allowed misuse of the portal.
• In some cases, the system recorded meals for an entire week in one sitting—highly irregular under MDM norms.

A senior district official noted that “the portal’s integrity was compromised through deliberate data manipulation,” calling it a digital exploitation of welfare infrastructure.

Whistleblower Complaint Triggered Initial Investigation

According to sources familiar with the case, the investigation began after a whistleblower complaint highlighted that the number of students officially enrolled in some Balrampur schools did not match the MDM records.

The complainant, reportedly a former teacher, noticed frequent mismatches in c