NEW DELHI: Former chief financial adviser Ashok Lahiri is about to be named the brand new vice-chairman of Niti Aayog, changing Suman Bery. Gobardhan Das, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Schooling and Analysis, Bhopal, is to be nominated as a member of the government’s premier suppose tank. Lahiri is presently a BJP MLA from Balurghat, however just isn’t contesting the 2026 meeting polls. Das, a former JNU professor, had contested from Purbasthali Uttar constituency within the 2021 state polls as a BJP candidate. The 2 appointments come amid polls in West Bengal with the second spherical of voting on Wednesday and might be seen as an overture to the voters.

Appointments seen as a part of long-awaited Niti revamp

Considerably, Das is a Dalit and had allegedly confronted assaults from TMC cadres within the violence that adopted the 2021 elections in Bengal.The appointments are seen as a part of a long-awaited overhaul of Niti Aayog, the place Bery, a shock choose, has been on the helm for 4 years. On a number of events, the Modi administration was seen to have bypassed Bery and dealt straight with the members or the CEO.Lahiri will deliver his coaching as an economist and a policymaker to Niti Aayog, which has a part-time CEO after BVR Subrahmanyam’s exit final month. Lahiri is a profession economist who taught at Delhi College of Economics and labored on the World Financial institution and IMF earlier than returning to the finance ministry within the late Nineties. He then went on to go the Nationwide Institute of Public Finance and Coverage and was the chief financial adviser and subsequently a member of the fifteenth Finance Fee. He’s seen as among the many pioneers within the filed psephologist and co-authored ‘India Decides’ that mapped elections from 1952 to 1989.