Bhubaneswar: Odisha's Malkangiri district has the highest number of poor in the state while Puri has the lowest, revealed NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index.

As per the report, 45.01% population of Malkangiri belong to 'multidimensionally poor' category while the figure for Puri stands at 3.29%.

Other districts having higher percentage of poor population are Rayagada (34.03), Koraput (33.54), Nabarangpur (33.45) and Mayurbhanj (30.57).

On the other hand, Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda, Cuttack, Ganjam, Nayagarh, Jharsuguda, Sonepur, Kendrapara and Balangir have poverty rate below 10 percent.

The report further said that 62,62,852 people have been freed from poverty in Odisha between 2015-16 and 2019-21. During the period, the rate of poverty reduced from 29.34 percent to 15.68 percent in the state. In villages, the poverty reduced from 32.64 to 17.72 percent whereas in urban areas, the poverty rate decreased from 12.32 percent to 5.42 percent.

At country-level, more than 13.5 crore Indians escaped multi-dimensional poverty in five years, as there was a steep decline in the number of multidimensionally poor from 24.85 per cent to 14.96 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-21.

Uttar Pradesh registered the highest decline with 3.43 crore, followed by Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan, the report said.