New NITI Aayog CEO: Parameshwar Iyer, 81’ batch IAS officer has been appointed as the new CEO of Niti Aayog replacing Amitabh Kant who completes his term on June 30. The tenure will be of 2 years.
Iyer, an IAS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre, served as secretary in the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation from 1981 to July 2020. Iyer worked as a water and sanitation specialist for the World Bank after retiring from the IAS in 2009.
In 2016, the NDA government approached him about becoming the head of the drinking and sanitation department. He worked at the United Nations as a Senior Rural Water Sanitation Specialist from April 1998 to February 2006. Iyer has also worked in education with the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh.
Amitabh Kant, the CEO of Niti Aayog, is set to leave the government think tank at the end of June after a six-year tenure. He’s a retired IAS officer of the Kerala cadre from the 1980 batch, and has been the CEO of Niti Aayog since 2016. During his tenure at the organisation, Kant rose to the top of the government’s policy making in areas such as industrial development, technology, and investment.
The NITI Aayog serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalysing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism through the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. It was established in 2015, by the NDA government, to replace the Planning Commission which followed a top-down model. The NITI Aayog council comprises all the state Chief Ministers, along with the Chief Ministers of Delhi and Puducherry, Lieutenant Governors of all UTs, and a vice-chairman nominated by the Prime Minister. The chairman of Niti Aayog is the Prime Minister of India.