A joint team of Food Supply Department and Food Safety Administration (FSA) has carried out massive raid at different mess and canteens run at the campus of Pandit Dwarka Prasad Mishra Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur. The raid was conducted following the complaint regarding use of sub-quality food material and storage of unauthorised gas cylinders in these mess and canteens. Based on the doubt the team of Food Safety Administration has collected samples of paneer, turmeric powder, gulab jamun mix, ajinomoto and papad from Mumbai-based two firms including Shri Annpurna catering and Annapurna catering, samples of coriander powder from Harsh Catering and Besan and Fruit Cake from MK Food, for tests to be conducted at the State Food Testing Lab, Bhopal.

 

All these catering firms were active at Central mess of PDPM IIITDM. Authorised officials also served notices to the Mumbai-based firms as the firm managements were unable to display license, improper storage of food materials, unavailability of health certificates of food handlers and certificate of food safety supervisor and absence of food safety display board at the Central mess. Simultaneously, sample of besan was collected from the firm engaged at Aryabhatt canteen. All these samples are being sent to the State Food Testing Lab Bhopal for testing. During raid, the team found 42 filled and 9 empty gas cylinders stored illegally in the campus. In lack of required documents, all the cylinders were confiscated by the team. A case under relevant section of Essential Commodity Act 1955 was filed to take action against these firms. The team comprised of Kamlesh Tandekar, District Supply Controller, Sanjeev Agrawal, Siddharth Rai, both Junior Supply Officers and Food Security Officer, Pankaj Shrivastava, Madhuri Mishra and Vinod Dhurve who took active participation in the raid.