Two members of National Statistical Commission quit

Two independent members of the National Statistical Commission, P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi, have resigned over disagreement with the government on certain issues, an official said Tuesday.

Mohanan was also the acting chairperson. With the two members quitting, the NSC now has 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.

Both members tendered their resignation on January 28, 2019, an official said.

The NSC, under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), is to have seven members, as per its website. Already, three posts were vacant.

The tenure of Mohanan and Meenakshi was to end in June 2020. They joined as members in June 2017.

Reportedly, these two members are said to have resigned over disagreement with the government on some issues, the official said.

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.