How many 'actually poor' is India home to? Amid some confusion, sparked in part by a World Bank report, the government is setting up a new group to get the answer.

The rural development ministry has constituted an Expert Group to recommend a methodology to conduct the Below Poverty Line (BPL) census in the country.

The 16-member group will look into the institutional system for conducting the BPL survey, processing of data validation, and approval of the below poverty line at various levels for the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12).

The surveys to determine the number of poor is conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), which is attached to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation.

"There was a long felt need to evolve a transparent methodology to identify and capture the actually poor BPL households in the rural areas," a rural development ministry official said Friday.

The expert group, headed by M. Shankar, a former secretary in the rural development, will submit its report in six months.

Estimates of how many Indians are poor vary.

According to a World Bank report released Tuesday, the actual number of poor in India has gone up over the years if the new poverty benchmark -- a daily income of $1.25 -- is taken into consideration.

This benchmark would put the numger of poor in India at 456 million -- in 2005 -- out of population of 1.2 billion.

But if one were to consider the decades-old poverty line of daily income of less than $1 or around Rs.40 a day, the number of poor below the poverty line has gone down in the past three decades.

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