PC Mohanan, who quit the post of acting chairman of National Statistical Commission on Tuesday, said that the reason behind his resignation was lack of co-ordination and seriousness on the part of the government in meeting the objectives of the body.

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Along with Mohanan, another member of the body, JV Meenakshi, also resigned.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18 on Wednesday, Mohanan said, "The reason for our resignation is basically we thought that the NSC is not able to contribute to the objectives for which it was set up like being the apex body for official statistics and we were not being taken very seriously."

Mohanan alleged that the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released major data without getting the commission's approval, a practice against the guidelines.

“As per the guidelines of the ministry for conduct of census and surveys, the commission’s approval is required for any major statistical census or surveys and the ministry has gone ahead and announced major survey census like economic census without referring to the commission. So there are incidences like this and I do not want to go into every case," he said.

The tenure of Mohanan and Meenakshi was to end in June 2020. The resignations of the two left behind no external members in the body.

The NSC, under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), is required to have seven members.

Mohanan said that the government is already in the process of selecting a chairman and two more members.

"We didn’t like the involvement of NITI Aayog for backdated GDP series announcement," Mohanan told CNBC-TV18.

In November last year, the NITI Aayog had come under fire for announcing the revised GDP data of the UPA years.

Apart from GDP, he said that the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) reports are approved by the NSC in normal practice. However, employment reports which had been approved were not released.

The ministry, however, in a statement, said that the concerns cited by the two members "were not expressed by the members in any of the meetings of the commission in the last few months".

"As far as the back series of the GDP is concerned, the National Statistical Commission had itself urged 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 ministry stated.

(Image credits: Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/mohanan.pc)

First Published:Jan 30, 2019 1:46 PM IST