No report of starvation deaths from states and UTs, Smriti Irani tells LS

There is no report of starvation deaths from states and Union Territories, the government informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.

Responding to a question, Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said the Global Hunger Index did not reflect India's true picture as it was a flawed measure of "hunger".

It should not be taken at face value as it is neither appropriate nor representative of hunger prevalent in a country, she said.

India ranked 107th of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index - 2022 with its child wasting rate, at 19.3 per cent, being the highest in the world.

"There is no report of starvation deaths from states/UTs," Irani said in a written reply in response to a question on the number of starvation-related deaths among children and adults in India since 2014.

Responding to another question, Irani provided data as per which 140,575 children went missing since 2019 and 125,445 children had been recovered during the same period.