Delhi has more people than Greece & New Zealand

NEW DELHI: Delhi’s population is now higher than the population of countries like New Zealand, Greece, Sweden, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands. It has officially crossed two crore, according to the data released by the Election Commission of India, with the announcement of the upcoming assembly elections.
The officially estimated population of 2.01 crore in 2020 is more than the population of 140 countries/territories for which both population and area data is available, though Delhi’s area is tiny in comparison to many of them.
The largest country by area with fewer people than India’s capital is Kazakhstan. The country that is spread over 27 lakh square km has an estimated population of 1.88 crore. This means its population is 93.4% of Delhi’s, while its area is 1,819 times as large. Similarly Zimbabwe has 73.9% of Delhi’s population and is 261 times the area.
There are over 50 countries with higher populations than Delhi. Even among these, many have a slightly higher population but are over thousand times bigger in area. Canada for example has a population which is 1.9 times of Delhi and an area that is 6,128 times the size of India’s capital. Similarly, Australia is 5,183 times the size of Delhi with just 1.3 times its population. Argentina and Saudi Arabia are also over a thousand times Delhi’s size with only slightly higher population.
All of this is just the National Capital Territory. The population of the Delhi Urban Agglomeration (UA) — the continuous urban spread that includes Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad — is by far the largest in the country. The UN estimates for Delhi UA’s population at three crore for 2020, a crore more than the Mumbai UA. Other UAs with population over a crore are Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Delhi UA was the second fastest growing among these six. Between 2010 and 2020, Delhi UA saw a decadal population growth of 38% less only than Bangalore’s 49% in this period.
Delhi UA is also, after Tokyo, the world’s second largest continuous urban spread. Tokyo has an estimated 3.7 crore people living in the city and adjoining overgrowths. Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Dhaka, Cairo and Beijing are next on the list of the world’s biggest UAs. Among the 10 largest, Dhaka saw the fastest growth between 2010 and 2020 while Delhi came second on this count.