Two members of Statistical Commission quit over 'disagreement' with government

NEW DELHI: Two independent members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi, on Tuesday tendered their resignation from the prestigious institute over 'disagreement' with the government on some important issues.

Mohanan was also the acting chairperson, PTI reported. The NSC has only four members and with Mohanan and Meenakshi quitting, it is now left with only two members -- Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

"I have resigned from NSC. We thought that the commission is not very effective now a days and we also thought that we are not able to discharge the commission's responsibility," Mohanan told PTI.

The website of the NSC, which falls under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), says that it must have seven members. 

The tenure of Mohanan and Meenakshi - who had joined as NSC members in June 2017 - was scheduled to end in June 2020. 

In November last year, the NITI Aayog had come under fire for announcing the revised GDP data of the UPA years.

NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar and Chief Statistician Srivastava had announced the back-series data by the government. 

Reacting to the development, senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that one more venerable institution has died due to "malicious negligence" of the government.

"We mourn the death of the National Statistical Commission and remember with gratitude its valiant fight to release untainted GDP data and employment data. May the NSC rest in peace until it is re-born again!?" he said in a series of tweets.

(with agency inputs)