NSC members who resigned never expressed reservations, says govt; Cong says another body destroyed

With two independent members of the National Statistical Commission quitting over non-release of job figures, the government Wednesday said the two had not expressed any concern in panel meetings, but the opposition Congress slammed it for destroying yet another institution.

P C Mohanan, who along with J V Meenakshi resigned earlier this week, cited delays in the release of the National Sample Survey Office's (NSSO) report on employment as one of the reasons for the decisions.

Stating that the National Statistical Commission (NSC) had recommended to release the employment report in January 2019, he said the members were sidelined and were "unable to discharge" duties.

Speaking to PTI, Mohanan had said: "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".

However, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in a clarification stated: "These concerns were not expressed by the members in any of the meetings of the Commission in the last few months."
Referring to the issues concerning labour force survey, which is conducted by the NSSO under MoSPI, it said: "NSSO is processing the quarterly data for the period, July 2017 to December 2018, and the report will be released thereafter."
"One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government," Chidambaram tweeted. "We mourn the death of the National Statistical Commission and remember with gratitude its valiant fight to release untainted GDP data and employment data. May the NSC rest in peace until it is re-born again."