According to the report, the ranking, based on data collected by United Nations Population Division, surprised many as the Kerala’s population rate is the lowest in the country. While Kerala’s population growth average stood at 4.6 per cent, Malappuram’s population reportedly grew at 13.4 per cent.

The New Indian Express quoted Mark Doyle, editor (The World This Week and Letters) of The Economist,as saying that ranking is based on the data collected by United Nations Population Division “The percentage rate for fastest-growing cities in our Pocket World in Figures Book is taken by calculating the difference between the populations for 2015 and 2020 (for cities with at least 750,000 people),”

Given Kerala’s sub-replacement-level fertility rate and also claims to 'Scandinavian level’ socio-economic indicators, the numbers was viewed with some surprise.

As per official census 2011 , Muslim constitue majority in Malappuram. Total population of Malappuram district is 4,112,920 as per census 2011. Muslims constitutes 70.24% of Malappuram population. Hindu are minority in Malappuram state forming 27.60% of total population.

According to the 2011 census, of the total of 88.7 lakh Muslims in the State in 2011, 63.8 lakh are in North Kerala and only about 25 lakh in South Kerala.

In 1901, Muslims formed nearly 30 percent of the population in North Kerala. Since then, their share has been growing consistently from decade to decade, excepting a slight decline in 1941-51. The rise has been precipitously sharp after Independence and Partition. Muslims now form 43.5 percent of the population of North Kerala; there has been an accretion of nearly 14 percentage points to their share since 1901. Of this, 12 percentage points have been added after 1951.

Apart from three cities in Kerala, the other cities of the world that featured in the top ten list include three from China and one each from Oman, Nigeria, UAE and Vietnam.

Thrissur, another city in Kerala, was also found to be growing fast with a rank of 13. Surat (ranked 27) in Gujarat and Tirupur (30) in Tamil Nadu are the other two cities from India that featured in the top 30.

While Kerala has three cities among the top ten in population growth, none of its cities feature in the list of fastest growing city (economically in 2019-35 period.

According to a global economic research report by Oxford Economics,, Gujarat’s Surat city, which is renowned as global diamond trading and processing hub, wwould be the world's fastest growing city in the 2019-35 period.

The report prepared which is engaged in global forecasting and quantitative analysis, further said all the top ten fastest-growing cities in the world in 2019-35 will be from India.

The report predicted that the gross domestic product (GDP) of Surat will grow at an average growth rate of 9.2 per cent over the 2019-35 period.

As per the Oxford Economics report, all the top ten fastest growing cities in the world will be from India. Besides Surat, the other nine cities are Agra, Bengaluru Hyderabad, Nagpur, Tiruppur, Rajkot, Tiruchirappalli, Chennai and Vijayawada.

Also Read: The Continuing Decline Of Hindus In Kerala