At Wednesday’s meeting, chaired by Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, the 235 additional districts
were selected on the basis of the level of stunting, ensuring that all 105 Left Wing Extremists and 117
Aspirational districts were included and wherever a gap of one district had been left to achieve saturation
in states/UTs.
Altogether 315 districts have been already covered under phase-I of POSHAN Abhiyaan and the balance
167 districts out of 718 districts will be covered in Phase III of the Abhiyaan.
The Council will submit its report to the Prime Minister every six months.
Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution , Sh.Hardeep Singh Puri,
Minister of State (I/C) for Housing & Urban Affairs, State Ministers of WCD from the states of Bihar,
Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, Secretaries of Central Government and District
Collectors of eight districts attended the meeting and deliberated on the implementation of the Abhiyaan.
Mr Paswan stressed that mothers should be involved through Self Help groups for distribution of Take home
ration in Anganwadi Centres.
As several states had highlighted problems in procurement of tablets for anganwadi supervisors, the meeting
decided that smartphones could be procured for anganwadi supervisors instead of tablets.
On direct transfer of funds to states/UTs for cash award to frontline functionaries, instead of creation of
corpus fund, it was decided to examine the matter in consultation with the Ministry of Finance.
Dr Rajiv Kumar stressed on the need for ground level work and participation from all sectors, for converting
the mission into Jan Andolan and achieving the goals. He called for feedback and suggestions from members
and state and district level officers in implementing the mission.
Dr Vinod Paul, Member, NITI Aayog, in his address highlighted that the focus was on the first 1000 days of the
child and preventive care for adolescent girls, women and mothers. He also said that Home-based Care for
Young Child (HBYC) would be a crucial component of POSHAN Abhiyaan. In HBYC, ASHAs supported by
anganwadi workers (AWW) will visit the homes of children aged between three to 15 months and sensitise
mothers on energy density and diet of child.
The committee endorsed his recommendation on a package of interventions matrix for the first 1000 days
of the child, rolling out HBYC within a month, social and behavioural change road map and action roll out.
