Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
New Delhi: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram at the BSF Investiture ceremony in New Delhi on Tuesday. PTI Photo by Vijay Kumar Joshi (PTI5_22_2012_000125B)

The National Institution for Transforming India also called NITI Aayog’s vice-chairman Arvind Panagriya resigned from the post on Tuesday saying that he wanted to return to his first love of teaching.

NITI Aayog was established on Jan 1, 2015, via a resolution of the Union Cabinet to replace the Planning Commission instituted in 1950. It is the Think Tank for the government which provides directional and policy inputs and also helps the government to design strategic and long term policies. The institution is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Arvind was elected as the vice-president by Modi immediately after the institution was established in 2015. Proving his services for two and a half years Arvind expressed his wish to Modi to resign from the post to go back to teach at the Columbia University. He will hand over the office on Aug 31.

Criticising the resignation of Arvind, former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that it was a wise decision taken by Arvind well before he’s proved wrong for predicting that growth in Q4 of 2017-18 will touch 8 percent. Arvind had earlier claimed growth in Q4 of 2017-18 will touch 8% but did not happen so. Chidambaram said that he Arvind wisely calculated his moves and before his predictions could be proved wrong he playing smartly resigned.