Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman - DNH&DD(PM POSHAN - DNH&DD)

Overview

About PM POSHAN - DNH&DD

In this union territory the benefit is a plate of food at lunchtime, cooked for most schools in one contracted kitchen and delivered to the school gate. Nothing is credited to a parent, a student or a household account, and no form exists at any stage: a child on the roll of an eligible government, local body or government-aided school here is covered from the day of admission. A reader who came here hunting for an application form will leave without one, because the scheme has never had one.

The parts worth reading are the local ones. How many schools the Directorate actually feeds, who does the cooking and where, what the administration puts on the plate out of its own budget, and who picks up the phone when the food does not arrive.

PM POSHAN in this territory is run by the Directorate of Education at Moti Daman, which covers Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu from a single office. Its scale is small enough to state exactly. Reviewing 2025-26 performance, the Programme Approval Board recorded 304 schools with a combined enrolment of 74,579 children, of whom 57,860 took the meal on an average day, a figure the Board itself puts at 78 percent (Minutes of the PAB-PM POSHAN meeting for DNH&DD, 16 May 2026).

The distance between the roll and the plate is attendance, not rejection. Nobody is turned away; a child who is absent simply does not eat that day's meal, and the average is dragged down by every absence in the territory.

The legal spine is not a scholarship rule. Section 5(1)(b) of the National Food Security Act, 2013 entitles a child up to Class VIII to one mid-day meal free of charge on every day except school holidays, in schools run by local bodies, government and government-aided managements, and Schedule II of the same Act fixes the nutritional standard the meal has to meet (PM POSHAN Guidelines, Ministry of Education). What the school owes is an entitlement, not an award.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no window to catch. The listing carries an opening date but no closing one, and that opening date is 15 August 1995, the day the centrally sponsored programme that grew into the Mid Day Meal Scheme was launched (PM POSHAN Guidelines, Ministry of Education). It marks the start of the scheme, not of an application period.

The dates that do move belong to the administration. The Programme Approval Board met on 16 May 2026 to clear this UT's annual plan, approving 245 school working days for 2026-27, and the menu revision that brings in a wheat-based meal is timed to the same year (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27). The material cost that funds the plate last changed on 1 May 2025 (Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Education).

A household is really watching only one calendar, the school's own admission cycle. Get a child onto an eligible roll and the meals begin with the session.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Three managements carry the entitlement here, and the class band is not identical across them. Government schools are covered from Balvatika through Class VIII, local body schools across the same span, and government-aided schools for Classes VI to VIII only. Children in Special Training Centres under the RTE Act, and children with special needs enrolled under Home Based Education, are named as eligible as well. Income, caste category and marks play no part.

Balvatika, the pre-primary year that sits immediately before Class I, is the newest band and the one growing fastest here while the rest shrinks. Balvatika enrolment went from 7,678 in 2024-25 to 10,099 in 2025-26, which the Board's own table puts at 24 percent, against a fall of 7 percent in primary enrolment across the same pair of years (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Private unaided schools sit outside the programme at any fee level, and so does every class above VIII. The one boundary parents here miss is inside the aided sector: because the aided entitlement begins at Class VI, a child in Class III at a government-aided school is outside the covered band even though the school itself is aided, while a classmate of the same age in a government or local body school is inside it.

Beyond those lines the record carries no disqualification list at all, and the blank is not an omission. A statutory entitlement filters on where a child studies, not on what the family earns, so there is nothing for a rejection clause to do.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A child fed in Class V is fed in Class VI on the strength of the school register, with no renewal step, no fresh sanction and no certificate to produce.

What is renewed each year is the money. For 2026-27 the Board approved 59,566 students, split as 7,817 in Balvatika, 30,612 in primary and 21,137 in upper primary, over 245 working days, with central assistance of Rs 13.88 crore and 1,718 MT of foodgrains made up of 1,203 MT of rice and 515 MT of wheat (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27).

That approval sits well below the 74,579 children on the roll, and the shortfall is not a cut. The approval is pitched at average daily coverage rather than enrolment, and the minutes say in terms that the quantification is only an estimate for releasing central assistance, that every child attending an eligible institution must be served a meal irrespective of what the Board approved, and that the UT may come back for more if attendance or working days rise.

What you get

Award & benefits

One hot cooked meal on every school day, to a fixed floor that steps up between the primary and upper primary bands.

Buying that meal is paid for out of a per-child material cost covering pulses, vegetables, oil, condiments and fuel. It was raised by 9.50 percent with effect from 1 May 2025, to Rs 6.78 a day for Balvatika and primary and Rs 10.17 for upper primary, and the Ministry describes those as minimum mandatory rates that a state or union territory is free to exceed from its own resources (Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Education, 10 April 2025).

This administration does exceed them, and the difference is visible on the tray. Sukhadi or Lapsi, the wheat-and-jaggery preparations of this coast, are served to all students on all school days out of the UT's own funds (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2025-26). A parent comparing the local tray against a national description of the scheme will find an extra item on it and no error anywhere.

Two changes are in train on top of that. The UT told the Board it is revising the menu to bring in a wheat-based meal from 2026-27, which is why its grain allocation for that year carries 515 MT of wheat alongside the rice (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27). And Tithi Bhojan, under which people from the community sponsor food on a birthday, anniversary or festival, is reported here as reaching every student (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27); the guidelines allow it as either an additional item or a full meal (PM POSHAN Guidelines, Ministry of Education), so on a Tithi Bhojan day the plate can be the donation rather than a supplement to it.

• Hot, cooked, nutritious meals provided to students on all school working days.
• Ensures adequate calorie and protein intake as per national nutritional norms.
• Improves health and nutrition levels of school-going children.
• Enhances school attendance, retention, and reduces classroom hunger.
• Supports better concentration and learning outcomes among students.
• Provides essential micronutrients to address anaemia and malnutrition.
• Encourages enrollment in Government and Government Aided schools.
• Strengthens social equity by serving all children without discrimination.
• Includes food safety and hygiene measures for quality assurance.
• Provides support for kitchen devices and infrastructure improvement.

What to prepare

Documents required

Nothing is asked of a family. The record's own answer is that no document is required and that enrolment is verified through school records, which means the file that decides eligibility was opened at admission and never leaves the school.

Which register carries the child does matter, though, because the covered band differs by management. In a government or local body school the roll qualifies a child from Balvatika onward; in a government-aided school it qualifies them from Class VI.

Step by step

How to apply

Admission is the whole application. A parent who wants the meal gets the child onto the roll of a government, local body or government-aided school in the territory, and the head teacher's daily count then drives the kitchen. Admission itself is a separate exercise the Directorate runs from Shiksha Sadan at Moti Daman, including seat allotment under the RTE Act for Class I entry (Directorate of Education, UT Administration of DNH & DD).

Because no individual claim is ever filed, there is no reference number, no acknowledgement and no status screen. What can be checked instead is the school's side of the bargain. The PM POSHAN Automated Monitoring System, fed by daily entries from schools, carries standing reports for schools where meals were not served, where food grains were unavailable, where funds or ingredients were unavailable and where no cook was present, plus exception reports for schools that missed meals on three consecutive days or on more than five days in a month (PM POSHAN Automated Monitoring System).

One quirk is worth knowing before reading those tables. They are broken out state by state, and this territory still appears under three separate rows, the merged DNH & DD alongside the pre-merger D & N Haveli and Daman & Diu entries, so a parent checking whether local schools have surfaced has to look at all three rather than one.

How winners are picked

Selection process

There is no shortlist to make. Inside an eligible school the coverage is universal and the attendance register is the only thing that decides who eats, with no ranking, no interview, no quota and no queue.

The one number that looks like a limit, the Board's approval of 59,566 students for 2026-27, is an accounting figure for releasing money and grain rather than a cap on children (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27). A child who turns up is fed whether or not the count has been reached.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The entitlement runs per attending child per school day, which is the arithmetic behind the territory's average coverage sitting below its enrolment.

Quality is meant to be checked at the point of serving. A teacher has to taste the food just before it goes out and record the tasting in a register, and an SMC member is expected to taste on rotation alongside the teachers (PM POSHAN Guidelines, Ministry of Education). At its 2025-26 review this UT was also urged to build rostered groups of parents, preferably mothers, to taste the meals at school level (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2025-26).

Laboratory testing sits behind the tasting, and here it has a wrinkle the central kitchen creates. The Board's 2026-27 review records 29 meals tested in 2025-26, all meeting norms (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2026-27), against 38 samples all meeting norms at the review before it (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2025-26). Because most schools here eat food cooked off site, the UT was told to draw its samples at the schools rather than at the centralised kitchen, and to measure how long the food takes to reach the farthest school it serves (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2025-26).

Social audit is the wider check. The UT reported conducting it in 60 schools across its districts, and was advised to cover at least 20 schools or 2 percent of schools per district, whichever is higher (PAB minutes for DNH&DD, 2025-26).

Get help

Contact

The school is the fastest route and usually the right one. A head teacher and the School Management Committee are the only people who can get food back onto the plate this week, and an interruption is normally a supply problem they are already chasing.

Above the school, a single office owns the programme for the whole territory. It is reachable on 0260-2230126 and at diredu-dd[at]ddd[dot]gov[dot]in, and its counter is at Shiksha Sadan, behind the Collectorate, Moti Daman (Directorate of Education, UT Administration of DNH & DD).

For something that needs a written trail, the administration runs a single web form for grievances and complaints. It takes a name, an email address, a subject, a message and a captcha, with no field for a school, a class or a scheme name and nowhere to attach a photograph, so all of that has to be typed into the message (Grievances and Complaints, UT Administration of DNH & DD). The administration's citizens' corner points its Grievance Redressal link at the central public grievance portal at pgportal.gov.in rather than at a departmental desk, which is where a complaint travels if the territory does not settle it.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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