india

Updated: Jan 30, 2019 15:57 IST

The acting chairman and a member of the National Statistical Commission resigned on Wednesday over “differences” with the government. Acting chairman PC Mohanan told PTI that said the “commission is not very effective nowadays” and members weren’t able to “discharge the commission’s responsibility”.

Reacting to the resignations of Mohanan and external member J Meenakshi, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation said the members didn’t express any concerns in any of the meetings of the commission in the last few months.

According to sources and a report in the news website The Wire, the reasons for the resignations by Mohanan and Meenakshi were differences they had with the government over the publication of last year’s employment survey and over Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data pertaining to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) — showing that the economy had performed much better under the NDA than it did during the UPA.

On the labour force survey, the statistics ministry’s statement said “NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) is processing the quarterly data for the period July 2017 to December 2018 and the report will be released thereafter.” The survey is conducted by the NSSO under the ministry.

In its clarification the GDP back series data, the statistics ministry said the statement said that National Statistical Commission had itself advised the ministry to finalise and release it. “The official estimates of the back series of GDP were accordingly computed using the methodology adopted in the 2011-12 base year series and this was approved by the experts in the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics, which is the appropriate body,” the statement 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.

With the departures of PC Mohanan and J Meenakshi, the National Statistical Commission (NSC) now has no external members. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and chief statistician of India Pravin Srivastava remain as ex-officio member secretary, respectively. The NSC came into existence on July 12, 2006 and has four members besides a chairperson. The NSC is to have seven members, as per its website. Already, three posts were vacant.