Free Nutritious Meals Budget Challenged Again Before Constitutional Court
A coalition of civil society organisations and individuals from various institutions has filed a constitutional review petition with the Constitutional Court challenging Law Number 17 of 2025 regarding the 2026 state budget, specifically concerning the free nutritious meals (MBG) budget allocation.
Muhammad Isnur, Chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), stated that the coalition is contesting the law because it contains budget provisions without clear legal basis. Consequently, the impact of this budget arrangement extends widely to education, health budgets, and fund transfers to regional governments.
“The 2026 State Budget Law represents what we call abuse, injustice, and arbitrary, authoritarian governance in budgeting because it lacks proper legislative foundation,” Isnur said after filing the petition at the Constitutional Court building in Central Jakarta on Tuesday, 10 March 2026.
Isnur noted that the law creates new policies. For instance, the free nutritious meals budget lacks clear legislative reference and institutional nomenclature basis. Yet suddenly the MBG budget appears and cuts allocations from other programmes.
“The impact is extraordinary. There is systematic abuse in the legislative planning,” Isnur stated.
The coalition is requesting the Constitutional Court to examine six articles in the 2026 Budget Law, including Article 8 paragraph 5, Article 9 paragraph 4, Article 11 paragraph 2, Article 13 paragraph 4, Article 14 paragraph 1, Article 20 paragraph 1, and Article 29 paragraph 1.
Isnur said the petitioners are requesting the Constitutional Court to provide constitutionally conditional interpretation, request clarification and additional language, and also request deletion of certain provisions. For instance, the phrase “at the government’s discretion” in the law.
“How can it be at the government’s discretion? Without legal basis? Without a presidential regulation? That cannot be. There are laws governing how to make laws and how to make budget laws,” he said.
According to Isnur, the 2026 Budget Law clearly violates the constitution and other laws, particularly breaching good governance principles.
Busyro Muqoddas, former Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission, who also joined as an individual petitioner, stated that the constitutional review is being filed because MBG governance has become increasingly uncontrolled. As a result, the MBG project is actually harming and impoverishing the broader society.
“The MBG exemplifies increasingly anti-democratic bureaucratic authoritarianism. If left unchecked, the people will suffer,” Busyro said.
The 2026 State Budget Law was previously also challenged before the Constitutional Court by Reza Sudrajat, a contract teacher affected by education budget cuts to fund the free nutritious meals programme.
Reza Sudrajat challenged the constitutionality of Article 22 paragraph 2 and its explanation, as well as Article 22 paragraph 3 and its explanation in the law. In Case Number 55/PUU-XXIV/2026, Reza stated that the constitutional loss experienced is not merely a feeling but real constitutional injury. Article 31 paragraph 4 of the 1945 Constitution requires the state to prioritise education funding at 20 per cent of the budget.
“However, in the 2026 State Budget Law, my right to decent welfare and students’ right to educational facilities have been obscured by the emergence of budget allocations that should not exist,” Reza said during the preliminary examination hearing on 12 February 2026, as cited in the Constitutional Court statement.
Reza emphasised that he is not opposed to providing nutrition to the public, but he objects to the budget allocation mechanism used. He questioned the allocation of free nutritious meals funds consuming 268 trillion rupiah from education budgets out of a total budget of 769 trillion rupiah.
According to him, this results in education budget allocation falling short of the 20 per cent constitutional requirement. “If this food allocation is removed, the actual education budget would only be 11.9 per cent of the total, far below the constitutional mandate,” Reza said.