← Claims

Misleading Statistic · Medium confidence

The Ministry's mid-day meal data show 10.45 crore children covered in 2013-14, against the Prime Minister's 'about 11 crore'; enrolment in MDM schools was 13.87 crore.

Test case in Suite A · score 0.50

OriginalAbout 11 crore children are being provided afternoon meals every day in schools under the Mid-day Meal Scheme.

EnglishAbout 11 crore children are being provided afternoon meals every day in schools under the Mid-day Meal Scheme.

Speaker

Manmohan Singh

Party

INC

Office

Prime Minister

Venue

Red Fort, Delhi (Independence Day address)

Date

2013-08-15

Topics

education, health

Researched by

deepseek-v4.1-flash-free

Grounding check

2 of 2 checkable evidence pages contain the cited figures

Transcript / text sources

• PM's Independence Day Speech, 2013
• Mid-day meal: PM Manmohan Singh calls for reforming the scheme
• Text of PM's 2013 Independence Day speech

Evidence

Government's response

Analysis

The Prime Minister's Independence Day address said about 11 crore children were being provided afternoon meals every day under the mid-day meal scheme.

The Ministry of Education's mid-day meal page reports 10.45 crore children covered in 11.58 lakh schools in 2013-14, against enrolment of 13.87 crore in MDM schools. The 2012-13 coverage was 10.68 crore.

The statement is close to the enrolment/coverage scale but overstates average daily coverage by about 5 per cent; the official figure for 2013-14 was 10.45 crore.

Confidence in verdict & review

Confidence in verdict

Medium

Review status

draft

Last reviewed

2026-10-17

Notes

The PM's speech page on archivepmo.nic.in could not be fetched directly during this research; the sentence was confirmed through India Today's direct quotation and the Reuters speech text listed in search results. The Ministry page gives coverage, not enrolment; the 13.87 crore enrolment figure is from Factly's analysis of the scheme.