Outgoing West Bengal BJP MLA and economist Ashok Kumar Lahiri has been chosen to become the next vice-chairman of Niti Aayog, people familiar with the matter told HT on Friday. This will make him effectively the chief of the government think tank as the chairpersonship is held by the Prime Minister by default. He will replace Suman Bery.
In addition, Gobardhan Das, also a Bengali, is set to become a new member of the policy.
These two names being picked for the post — formal appointments awaited — come at a time when the BJP is in a pitched battle with the ruling TMC of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal.
A member of the current Bengal assembly from Balurghat — but not contesting the ongoing elections — Lahiri has served as the 12th Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Government of India.
Who is Ashok Lahiri
Lahiri, an alumnus of the economics department at Presidency University, Kolkata, has held research, teaching or leadership positions at the Delhi School of Economics, the Asian Development Bank, Bandhan Bank, and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
He has also had stints with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as a consultant and senior economist, respectively, his author profile with the publisher Penguin states.
Who is Gobardhan Das
{{/usCountry}}He has also had stints with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as a consultant and senior economist, respectively, his author profile with the publisher Penguin states.
Who is Gobardhan Das
{{/usCountry}}Gobardhan Das is a scientist and former BJP member who unsuccessfully contested the 2021 West Bengal polls from the Purbasthali Uttar constituency. He is a prominent immunologist formerly at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who served as director of IISER Bhopal.
Whom Lahiri will replace
The current Niti Aayog vice-chairperson is Suman Bery, holding thus the rank and status of a cabinet minister. A policy economist and research administrator, Bery took over NITI Aayog leadership in May 2022. At the time of his appointment, he was a Global Fellow in the Asia Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington; and a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research institution in Brussels. He was also a member of the board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi.
Lahiri's stint as CEA
Ashok Lahiri was appointed Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India (CEA) by the PM-led Appointments Committee of the Cabinet in December 2002, when BJP's Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM.
He demitted that office in June 2007, serving around three quarters of his stint under the Congress-led UPA government led by Manmohan Singh.