NITI Aayog Deputy Chairman Rajiv Kumar has stepped down. Suman K Berry has been made the new Deputy Chairman of NITI Aayog in his place. “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the resignation of Rajiv Kumar,” an official statement said on Friday. He will be relieved from the date of 30 April 2022. As of now, the reasons for his resignation are not known. The statement further said, ‘Dr. Approval has been given to appoint Suman K Berry as the Deputy Chairman of NITI Aayog with effect from May 1, 2022 till further orders, in place of Rajiv Kumar. According to Berry’s LinkedIn profile, he is a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research institute in Brussels.
The move to replace Kumar has been taken all of a sudden. The term of the vice-president has traditionally ended with the term of the government. The Prime Minister serves as the chairman of the government think tank, which came into shape after the closure of the then Planning Commission.
Beri has been made a member of NITI Aayog with immediate effect till 30 April 2022. Renowned economist Rajiv Kumar took over as the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog in August 2017. Kumar was entrusted with this responsibility after the then Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya stepped down from the commission. Kumar earned a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and a PhD from Lucknow University. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research. Apart from this, he has also worked in the private sector. He has also served as Chief Economist with industry lobby group CII and Secretary General of FICCI.
Suman Berry, on the other hand, is a renowned economist and has served as the Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), an economic think tank. He has also been a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, the Statistical Commission and the Technical Committee of the Reserve Bank of India. He has also worked for the World Bank during the country’s economic reforms; He has also served as Special Advisor to the Reserve Bank of India.