India’s position improved on Global Hunger Index: BJP

New Delhi, Oct 14 (IANS) The BJP on Saturday accused the Congress of "misleading" people on the 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI), saying that India's position had rather improved.

Rejecting the opposition claims that India had dropped 45 points compared with its earlier rank, Bharatiya Janata Party Spokesperson G.V.L. Narasimha Rao said the first two and a half years taken into consideration in the Global Hunger Index 2017 pertained to the period when the Congress-led government was in power.

India is ranked 100 out of 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), 2017, worse than Bangladesh and Iraq.

"India did hold 55th position in 2014, but at that time there were only 76 countries in the list," Rao said in a statement.

Claiming that India has rather improved its position, the BJP leader said the accusations by opposition parties were "attempts to malign the country's reputation".

"The GHI 2017 is based on surveys done between 2012-2016, during which the Congress was in power for two and a half years," Rao added.

He said out of four aspects of the hunger index, India has improved on three fronts and dropped only on the fourth -- prevalence of wasting in children under five years.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Friday took a dig at the central government by tweeting a media article on GHI 2017, with a couplet of Hindi poet Dushyant Kumar: "If you are hungry, be patient! So what if you have no bread? Hunger is a hot topic, these days. Of debate in the Delhi Durbar!"