New Delhi: In yet another setback for the government, two independent members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) – PC Mohanan and JV Meenakshi – have resigned from their posts reportedly over the way government had sidelined them. According to the official website of NSC, the tenures of Mohanan and Meenakshi were supposed to end in 2020, but they quit from their posts on Monday. 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 nowadays and we also thought that we are not able to discharge the commission's responsibility,” news agency PTI quoted Mohanan as saying. Both members tendered their resignation on January 28, informed an official.

Both Mohanan and Meenakshi resigned over the government's failure to recognise the NSC’s contribution and a delay in the release of new NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) data, The Wire reported. As per the NSC website, the commission, under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), is to have seven members. Already, three posts were vacant.

Even though the NSSO data was approved by the NSC in December last year, however, it has not been made public by the government so far. 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.

Soon after the news came to light, Opposition parties once again attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for not being able to handle yet another government institution. Speaking about the same, Congress senior leader P Chidambaram said that one more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government.

“We mourn the death of the National Statistical Commission and remember with gratitude its valiant fight to release untainted GDP data and employment data,” Chidambaram tweeted adding that may the NSC rest in peace until it is re-born again.

“The resignation of all non-govt members from the National Statistical Commission has rendered yet another public institution defunct & toothless. It also serves the government’s larger objective to black out all data & statistics of its miss-governance since last 5 years,” said another Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

(With agency inputs)