NITI Aayog Vice Chairman 2022: Rajiv Kumar steps down, Suman K Bery appointed as new Vice Chairman

NITI Vice Chairman: Suman K Bery was appointed as the new Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog by the government on April 22, 2022, after the sudden resignation of former Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar. As per an official order, Suman K Bery will take charge as the new Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog from May 1.

Rajiv Kumar, whose tenure as the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog will end on April 30, is an eminent economist who took over as the Vice-Chairman in August 2017 after the then VC Arvind Panagariya exited the Government think tank to return to the academics.

As per the official order, Rajiv Kumar’s resignation has been accepted and he will be relieved from the position with effect from April 30.

Dr Suman K Bery appointed as Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog after Dr Rajiv Kumar stepped down from his post. pic.twitter.com/6vQ9HWUSNJ

— ANI (@ANI) April 22, 2022

NITI Aayog new Vice Chairman: Who is Suman K Bery?

Suman K Bery who has been appointed as the new Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog has earlier served as the Director-General (Chief Executive) of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi.

Bery was also a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the Reserve Bank of India’s Technical Advisory Committee on Monetary Policy, and the Statistical Commission.

Back in 2010, when Suman K Bery was a member of Manmohan Singh’s Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, he had batted for the Reserve Bank of India to tighten its monetary policy to reign in the rising inflation.

Rajiv Kumar’s contribution as NITI Aayog Chairman

Rajiv Kumar has played a key role in the policy-making of NITI Aayog, with a focus on asset monetization, agriculture, aspirational districts program, disinvestment, and electric vehicles, among others.

Rajiv Kumar holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University and a PhD from Lucknow University. Kumar was also a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

In which year NITI Aayog was constituted?

NITI Aayog was established in 2015 by the NDA Government to replace the planning commission which followed a top-down model. NITI Aayog serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Indian Government. It is a nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development and fostering cooperative federalism through the involvement of State Governments in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach.