NSC members resign, Oppn steps up attack

After two members of the National Statistical Commission resigned abruptly, the Centre on Wednesday enhanced its firefight saying the members never voiced their concern in the past few months.

Two independent members of NSC -- P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi -- resigned on Monday over a disagreement with the government on certain issues. Mohanan also acted as the commission chairperson.

“One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government," former finance minister P Chidambaram tweeted.

"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 reborn again," he said in another tweet.

1

Another Congress leader Ahmed Patel said the resignations serve the government's objective to "blackout" all data and statistics of its "mis-governance".

Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi wondered if this has come in the wake of the "very embarrassing" jobs data and whether the NSC was "being forced" by the government to do more data doctoring.

NSC now has only two other members - Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog's Amitabh Kant.