Rajasthan High Court bans junk food in schools and 50 metres outside gates

The Rajasthan High Court has barred the sale of high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt food in school canteens and within 50 metres of school gates across the state. Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand of the Jodhpur bench issued the directions after taking suo motu notice of what he called systemic gaps in schools meant to serve Gen Z, Gen Alpha and Gen Beta.

The banned list includes carbonated drinks, chips, bakery items that contain trans fat, and other HFSS products. District magistrates and block education officers must inspect schools every month. Every school has four weeks to form a Food Safety and Nutrition Committee of teachers, parents and students. Canteens have eight weeks to put up menu boards that show calorie count, ingredients and nutritional value for each item.

The legal hook is not new. The Food Safety and Standards (Safe Food and Balanced Diets for Children in Schools) Regulations, 2020 already told schools to keep HFSS food off campus. The court said more than six years have passed with no effective enforcement. It warned that the health of lakhs of children in Rajasthan is at risk from obesity and lifestyle disease because those foods are still sold on and around campuses.

Mid-day meals sit under the same order. The state must audit quality and diet and keep the meals inside FSSAI balanced-diet guidelines. The court also asked for a grievance portal or helpline so violations can be reported without waiting for the monthly inspection.

The case is now a registered public interest litigation. Notices have gone to the Centre, the Union education and food secretaries, the Rajasthan chief secretary, the additional chief secretaries for education and food and civil supplies, FSSAI, and the Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Replies are due in eight weeks.

Justice Dhand did not stop at canteens. The same order flags paper leaks, screen time, missing toilets and weak buildings in government schools. It directs the creation of a Generation Z, Alpha and Beta Monitoring Cell under the chief secretary and tells the state to write an action plan for student welfare policies. Those pieces will take longer to measure. The food ban is the part that can be checked next month with a tape measure at the gate.

The 50-metre radius is the clause vendors will test. Many government schools in Rajasthan sit on main roads where carts sell chips and bottled soda at the boundary wall. A 50-metre line from the gate will catch some of those carts and miss others that sit just beyond it. Private schools with in-house canteens face a cleaner task: pull the SKUs and reprint the menu board.

FSSAI already has school-food rules on the books. What the High Court has added is a timetable, a named inspector, a committee inside each school, and a live PIL that will come back in eight weeks. If the monthly inspections happen, the first visible change will be at the gate, not in the mid-day meal kitchen.

Parents on the new committees will have to decide what counts as HFSS when a packaged snack carries a green label and a high salt number. The 2020 regulations use nutrient thresholds. Schools that wait for a state circular before they pull stock will miss the four-week committee deadline.

The court has tied food to a wider brief on child health and school infrastructure. That mix can dilute enforcement if the next hearing turns into a debate on buildings and paper leaks. The food directions are specific enough to stand on their own: no HFSS inside, no HFSS for 50 metres, boards in eight weeks, inspections every month.