Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday approved the reconstitution of NITI Aayog, retaining most of the existing members and appointing union home minister Amit Shah as an ex-officio member in the fifth meeting of the think-tank’s governing council.

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Rajiv Kumar, whose term ends this month, will continue as vice-chairman, but there is a cloud on the fate of CEO Amitabh Kant and member, Bibek Debroy, according to people familiar with the matter. The tenure of Kant, the high-profile bureaucrat, ends in a couple of months, but his name is not on the PM-approved list, which has created some confusion, said a person privy to the matter, requesting anonymity.

Other existing members VK Saraswat, Ramesh Chand and VK Paul have been retained.

Besides Shah, whose name figures in several ministerial panels, defence minister Rajanth Singh, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar will be ex-officio members.

Transport minister Nitin Gadkari, commerce and industry and railway minister Piyush Goyal, social justice minister Thawar Chand Gehlot and statistics minister Rao Inderjit Singh will be special invitees. The council, the apex body of Niti Aayog, includes all chief ministers, lieutenant governors of union territories, several union ministers and senior government officials.

Headed by the Prime Minister, the governing council's first meeting took place on February 8, 2015. The second meeting of council on July 15, 2015, reviewed the progress made by the three sub-groups of chief ministers and the two task forces. In the third meeting of the council on April 23, 2017, Modi had pitched for conducting simultaneous elections of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies and shifting to a January-December fiscal year.

The fourth meeting of the council on June 17, 2018, deliberated upon measures taken to double farmers' income and the progress of government's flagship schemes.

First Published:Jun 6, 2019 7:45 PM IST