Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday accused the Union government of widening economic inequality in India.
Kharge‘s comments come after Oxfam released a report which said that the richest 1% of India’s population owned more than 40.5% of the country’s total wealth in 2021, while the bottom 50% of the population only accounted for around 3% of it.
Kharge said that the Congress party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra is a movement to fill the gap of economic inequality, as highlighted in the report.
According to the report titled “Survival of the Richest: The India Supplement”, the combined wealth of India’s 100 richest persons reached Rs 54.12 lakh crore in 2022.
The total number of billionaires also increased in India from 102 in 2020 to 142 in 2021 and 166 in 2022. In a stark contrast 22.89 crore persons live in poverty in India – the highest in the world, the report said.