gp samanta: Govt appoints GP Samanta as new Chief Statistician

“The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Dr GP Samanta…as Chief Statistician of India (CSI)-cum-Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation initially for a period of two years,” the Department of Personnel and Training said in an order dated March 9.

Samanta is India’s fourth CSI.

Kshatrapati Shivaji, a 1986-batch Maharashtra cadre IAS officer, was given additional charge as MoSPI secretary in September last year after the tenure of Pravin Srivastava ended on August 31, 2020.

The government had then said the CSI will be the head of the National Statistical Organisation and secretary of the National Statistical Commission, and have a tenure of three years. A search committee constituted by the government recommends a panel of names for filling the vacancy and applicants have to be Indian nationals with “proven statistical and managerial experience in a large statistical organisation”.

The CSI’s responsibilities include coming out with key economic data such as national accounts that encompasses gross domestic product along with macroeconomic indicators such as industrial production, retail inflation and the employment-unemployment numbers through the Periodic Labour Force Survey.

The Annual Survey of Industries, Economic Census, Consumer Expenditure Survey and other surveys on agricultural households, too come under the CSI’s domain.