Government reconstitutes National Advisory Council

NEW DELHI: The government has reconstituted the National Advisory Council (NAC) chaired by Sonia Gandhi by dropping three members and inducting two new faces.

Mihir Shah, Member, Planning Commission, and Ashis Mondal, founder of the Bhopal-based NGO, Action for Social Advancement, have been inducted in the advisory panel for a period of one year.

Noted agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan, bureaucrat- turned-activist Harsh Mander and academician Madhav Gadgil have been denied renomination.

The tenure of the NAC had expired on May 31. The government reconstituted the advisory panel yesterday making it a 12-member body, including Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Other members of the panel who have been renominated are N C Saxena, Narendra Jadhav, Pramod Tandon, Aruna Roy, A K Shiva Kumar, Deep Joshi, Anu Aga, Farah Naqvi and Mirai Chatterjee. The tenure of the members of the reconstituted panel is till May 31, 2013.

Jean Dreze, who was appointed member of the NAC in 2009, had quit after the panel had sent its recommendations to the government on the Food Security Bill.

Ram Dayal Munda, a prominent tribal leader and NAC member since 2009, passed away in September last year.

A meeting of the NAC which was scheduled today has been postponed to July 6.

Currently, the NAC is deliberating on issues like watershed development, climate-smart agriculture and improving sex ratio at birth.