Modi Govt Fails To Appoint A Chief Statistician In Four Months
As there is no Chief Statistician in the country, gathering reliable economic data has become a challenging task.
The post of Chief Statistician in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme implementation is lying vacant for the past four months.
As there is no Chief Statistician in the country, gathering reliable economic data has become a challenging task.
The former Chief Statistician TCA Anant retired from the Central Statistics office on January 31. Now, a panel headed by Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha will select the chief statistician. Earlier, the deputy chairman of the government’s planning body, aided by experts, would select the head of the statistics office, according to a Bloomberg report.
Chancellor of the Central University of Gujarat Yoginder K. Alagh said that the government should have started the process earlier since it can take six to eight months to select a replacement.
India’s first Chief Statistician Pronab Sen told Bloomberg, “The delay affects the reputation and affects the working because the Chief Statistician’s post has a lot of responsibilities that are not easy to delegate to a bureaucrat”.
According to a report by Livemint, the Ministry of Statistics has often been criticised in the past for the poor quality of data, gaps in the data and delays in the release of data.