P Chidambaram
Lashing out at the Modi government over resignations in the National Statistical Commission, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that one more venerable institution has “died” due to the government's "malicious negligence".
The remarks come after two independent members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) -- P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi -- regisned on Monday over disagreement with the government on certain issues. Mohanan was also the acting chairperson.
“One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government,” Chidambaram said in his tweet.
“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 the two members quitting, the NSC now has only two members -- Chief Statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.
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 PTI inputs)
