Now, Statistical Commission in turmoil, two members quit

New Delhi: 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.

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.

In the backdrop of the resignations, Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that one more venerable institution has died due to the government's "malicious negligence".

One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government, 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 re-born again! he said in a series of tweets.