Ambani-duo India's richest residents

New Delhi, Nov 17 (UNI) The Ambani brothers, who split after a public spat, have overtaken Wipro chief Azim Premji as the richest resident Indian, as per Forbes Asia' 2006 India's Richest 40 list.

While steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, who won the battle for takeover of rival Arcelor, retains the top position as per figures compiled by the business magazine, the Reliance duo Mukesh and Anil Ambani hold the second and the third positions with net worth of 18.5 billion dollars and 14.8 billion dollars, respectively.

Mr Premji with a net worth of 14 billion dollars has dropped from the second position to the fourth.

In the fifth place stands Mr Kushal Pal Singh, who inherited his father-in-law's Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) and turned it into the nation's leading property developer.

Bharti Enterprises' Sunil Mittal, Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Birla, chairman of leading wind power company Suzlon Energy Tulsi Tanti, promoter of Unitech Ltd Ramesh Chandra and Pallonji Mistry, chairman of privately-held Shapoorji Pallonji&Co Ltd, are the others in the top 10.

The combined fortunes of the 40 wealthiest Indians stood at 170 billion dollars, an increase of 64 billion dollars. The ten richest accounted for two-thirds of the wealth of the group at 112 billion dollars.

According to Forbes, a 39 per cent surge in share prices and a red hot real estate market have helped produce nine new billionaires in the country.

There were 36 bilionaires on the list, and the nine new ones include Ramesh Chandra with 5.3 billion dollars of net worth, Grandhi Rao of the GMR Group, who shot to fame with his winning bid to privatise Delhi airport, with 5.2 billion dollars net worth and Sun TV's Kalnithi Maran (1.9 billion dollars).

Videocon's Venugopal Dhoot, who is set to acquire Daewoo Electronics for 700 million dollars, and Kotak Mahindra's Uday Kotak, who bought Goldman Sachs' stake in his investment and banking arms, were ranked at 26 and 27 respectively.

The youngest on the list are 31-year-old Shivinder Singh at 24th position with his 34-year-old brother Malvinder Singh, who hold a majority stake in pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy Laboratories, and have a net worth of 1.8 billion dollars.

This year's dropouts included the country's richest self-made woman and chairman and managing director of Biocon Ltd Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Anurag Dikshit is the biggest loser at number 29, as his PartyGaming stock tanked over regulatory issues.

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