Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejigs NITI Aayog, brings in Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal as ex-officio, members
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday approved the reconstitution of NITI Aayog. While PM Modi will continue to be its chairman, Rajiv Kumar will be its vice chairman. Other members include V.K. Saraswat, Ramesh Chand and Dr. V.K. Paul. Kumar, who serves as the chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune, had become its vice-chairman on September 1, 2017.
This time, PM Modi has brought in Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar as ex-officio members, while there are four special invitees, which include Nitin Gadkari, Thawar Chand Gahlot, Piyush Goyal and Rao Inderjit Singh. Amitabh Kant, an IAS officer of the 1980 batch who was appointed CEO of the NITI Aayog, was not included in the re-constituted organisation.
The NITI Aayog was set up by the Modi government in 2015 to provide guidance in economic policy-making process as well as help achieve long-term sustainable development goals. Some of its long term and short term initiatives include Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, medical education reform, agriculture reforms, indices for measuring states’ performances in health, education and water management and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, among others.
The governing council of NITI Aayog comprises of the chief ministers of all states, the chief ministers of the union territories of Delhi and Puducherry, the lieutenant governor of Andaman and Nicobar islands, and a vice-chairman nominated by the prime minister as its permanent members. It also has seven temporary members selected from leading universities and research institutions.
On August 13, 2014, the Modi Cabinet had scrapped the then Planning Commission to pave the way for NITI Aayog. On January 1, 2015, the centre announced the formation of NITI Aayog after the Cabinet passed a resolution to replace the Commission with the newly formed government think-tank. The NITI Aayog’s first meeting was chaired by PM Modi on February 8, 2015. In his observation on the necessity of creating NITI Aayog, the then Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that the 65-year-old Planning Commission had become redundant in a command economy structure.
