Draft Bill proposes autonomy for National Statistical Commission

News:Government has released the draft National Statistical Commission (NSC) Bill for public comments.

Facts:

About Draft National Statistical Commission(NSC) Bill:

• The draft bill is aimed at empowering the National Statistical Commission(NSC) to become the nodal body for all core statistics in the country.
• Core statistics include national income statistics like GDP, jobs data, industry data and budgetary transactions data.

Features of the Bill:

• The Draft bill proposes a statutory National Statistical Commission(NSC) with an independent secretariat headed by a secretary rank officer.
• The commission will have a Chairperson, five whole time members along with Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Chief Statistician of India(CSI) as other members and Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance as the ex-officio member.
• The Chairman and the members of the Commission shall be appointed by the central government on the recommendation of a search committee.
• The Bill envisages financial autonomy for the commission through an independent National Statistical Fund.But the commission would be bound by the directions that the Centre may give in the interest of the country.
• It also provides for establishing a National Statistical Audit and Assessment Organization within the NSC with a chief statistical auditor in the rank of secretary. 
• All nodal officers designated in central ministries/departments /state government shall be professionally responsible to Chief Statistician of India on core statistics.

Additional information:

About NSC:

• Currently,the National Statistical Commission(NSC) of India is an autonomous body which was formed in July 2005.
• The objective of its commission is to reduce the problems faced by statistical agencies in the country in relation to collection of data.