NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar steps down, Suman Bery to replace him

New Delhi: Rajiv Kumar, the vice chairman of NITI Aayog, resigned on Friday after being appointed to India's policy think tank five years ago. Suman Bery, an economist, has taken his place.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Personnel, the cabinet appointments committee accepted Rajiv Kumar's resignation and appointed Suman Bery as a full-time member of the NITI Aayog, and later as vice chairperson, effective May 1.

Kumar, an eminent economist, took over as vice chairman of Niti Aayog in August 2017 after the then VC Arvind Panagariya exited the government think-tank to return to academics.

Kumar holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford University and a PhD from Lucknow University. He was also a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

Suman Bery, who succeeds Rajiv Kumar, served as director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, or NCAER, one of the country's main independent policy research institutions, from 2001 to 2011.

Suman Bery, a senior visiting fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, is a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Global Fellow in the Asia programme. He is a Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic policy research institute.

He was also a member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, the Statistical Commission of India, and the Reserve Bank of India's Technical Advisory Committee on Monetary Policy.