Centre reconstitutes Niti Aayog, NDA allies get representation

New Delhi, July 16

The Centre on Tuesday reorganised the composition of the Niti Aayog by including Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as its ex-officio member along with existing members like Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

It also inducted representatives from parties of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as special invitees, which include JDU leader and Panchayati Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan; HAM (Secular) party chief and MSME Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi; LJP (Ramvilas) chief and Food Processing Minister Chirag Paswan; JDS leader and Steel Minister HD Kumaraswamy; and TDP leader and Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu.

Other special invitees include Health Minister JP Nadda, Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, Social Justice Minister Veerendra Kumar and Women and Child Development Minister Annapurna Devi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the chairperson of the Aayog and there are no changes in the post of Vice-Chairman and other full-time members.

Scientist V K Saraswat, agricultural economist Ramesh Chand, paediatrician V K Paul and macro-economist Arvind Virmani will also continue to be full-time members of the government think-tank.

Piyush Goyal and Anurag Thakur, who were inducted in the commission last year, failed to retain their seats this year.

According to a notification from the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Suman K Bery will remain the Vice-Chairman of Niti Aayog, alongside full-time members VK Saraswat, Ramesh Chand, VK Paul, and Arvind Virmani.

National Institution for Transforming India, better known as ‘NITI Aayog’, was constituted in 2015 when the Modi government chose to scrap the 65-year-old Planning Commission.