Early on Tuesday, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram claimed that poverty declined faster under the Manmohan Singh government and that the Narendra Modi sarkar has been indifferent to poverty. He also alleged that the pandemic and the resultant lockdowns only worsened the track record of the NDA government in recent years.

"The UNDP and Oxford HDI reports have confirmed what we have said several times: that the UPA government had the best record in lifting people out of poverty. The Report has confirmed that 27.39 crore people were lifted out of poverty in the 10 years of the UPA government," Chidambaram, the Congress leader, tweeted.

However, analysts are arguing that Chidambaram's interpretation is misleading. Columnist Karan Bhasin observed that the report uses data from the National Family Health Survey and finds multidimensional poverty declined by 11.9 % per year between 2015 to 2019, while it declined by 8.1 % per year between 2005-2016. "The Multidimensional Poverty declined faster by 3.8% per year during NDA," Bhasin added. 

"India has a comprehensive social safety net that has delivered well in the last 8 years," he wrote.