Sen likely to take over as NSC chief

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Pronab Sen, the former principal advisor to the Planning Commission and India's first chief statistician, is likely to be appointed the chairman of the National Statistical Commission (NSC). The appointment comes at a time when the Central Statistics Office is facing criticism from the finance ministry for supposedly underestimating economic ( GDP) growth numbers.

Sen, previously the member secretary of the six-member Commission, declined to comment on his appointment.

The NSC was set up seven years ago to oversee collation of official statistics and to ensure independence of the data monitoring mechanism. "There are around 46 government departments and ministries engaged in statistical work. NSC has to ensure that data collection is unbiased and free from any external influences," said a government official aware of the development.

Last week, both finance ministry and the Planning Commission questioned CSO's advance estimate of 5% GDP growth in 2012-13, which is below the government and RBI's projection of 5.5%. According to Sen, the CSO follows a methodology prescribed by the national income advisory committee and is transparent in its data collection. The data thus collected follows a particular process and can be verified.

The CSO puts out the data ahead of the budget. The budget is prepared on the basis of this data.

Ironically enough, Manmohan Singh as finance minister formalised this practice of mandating CSO to collect and release the data.