New Delhi:

Releasing its second list of 72 names for the Lok Sabha elections on Wednesday, the BJP has fielded five Union ministers from various states, including Piyush Goyal, who is set to make his electoral debut. His colleagues on the list are Nitin Gadkari, Anurag Thakur, Pralhad Joshi and Rao Inderjit Singh. 

Mr Goyal, who has been a three-time Rajya Sabha member, has been fielded from the Mumbai North seat, which has been held since 2014 by Gopal Shetty of the BJP. The minister – who holds the commerce and industry, textiles, and food and consumer affairs portfolios – joins health minister Mansukh Mandaviya and junior IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, among others, who will be making their Lok Sabha debut. 

The decision is in line with the BJP’s strategy of making as many ministers as possible contest the Lok Sabha polls and win, instead of making their way into the Cabinet through the Rajya Sabha.

The choice of Nitin Gadkari as the candidate from Nagpur, seen as important also because it is home to the RSS headquarters, should not be surprising because the Road Transport And Highways Minister has been elected from the seat since 2014. Tongues had, however, begun to wag when Mr Gadkari’s name was not in the first list of 195 candidates released on March 2, which had featured other party heavyweights like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray had even asked the minister to join hands with the opposition if he was “being insulted” by the BJP. Mr Gadkari had, however, rejected the INDIA bloc leader’s invite and dubbed it “immature” and “ridiculous”.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur’s name is one of two released for the four seats of Himachal Pradesh. He will contest from Hamirpur, a constituency he has won since 2008 and was also held by his father, Prem Kumar Dhumal, before him. 

Keeping up its focus on the south – where the BJP needs to do well to get its tally up from the 303 Lok Sabha seats it won in 2019 to the 370 it wants this time – the party has fielded Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi from Dharwad in Karnataka. Mr Joshi has been the MP from Dharwad since 2009 and Karnataka had contributed 25 of the 29 seats the BJP had won from the southern states in 2019.

Rao Inderjit Singh, who is the minister of state with independent charge of the Ministry of Statistics and holds other portfolios as well, will contest from Gurgaon. He has held the seat since 2009. 

“The government has formed various Committees after the year 1947…including Standing Committee on Economic Statistics,” Minister of State for Statistics Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to Lok Sabha. File
| Photo Credit: PTI

The government on August 9 said Standing Committee on Economic Statistics has been renamed as Standing Committee on Statistics.

The Committee will advise Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on all surveys.

“The government has formed various Committees after the year 1947…including Standing Committee on Economic Statistics (SCES),” Minister of State for Statistics Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

He further said SCES was renamed as Standing Committee on Statistics (SCoS), which was constituted vide a MoSPI order dated July 13, 2023.

SCoS will review the extant framework and address the issues raised from time to time on the subject/results/methodology, etc related to all surveys as brought before SCoS by MoSPI. It will advise on survey methodology including sampling frame, sampling design, survey instruments, etc and to finalise tabulation plan of surveys. It will also aid finalisation of survey results.

The panel will provide guidance to conduct pilot surveys/pre-testing, if necessary, before finalising schedules for data collection. It will also provide guidance for study and exploring the availability of administrative statistics relating to surveys/statistics.

SCoS will also provide guidance for studying/identifying data gaps/additional data requirements, if any, in respect of surveys/statistics and suggest appropriate strategy for improvement.

The panel will provide technical guidance to the Central and State-level agencies for conducting the surveys.

It will also look into any other matter relating to the surveys/survey results referred to SCoS by MoSPI from time to time. SCES chaired by former chief statistician Pronab Sen was set up in December 2019 for improving quality of data amid criticism of the government over political interference.

In March 2019, expressing concerns over “political interference” in influencing statistical data in India, as many as 108 economists and social scientists had called for restoration of “institutional independence” and integrity to the statistical organisations.

Their statement had come against the backdrop of a controversy over revision of gross domestic product (GDP) numbers and withholding employment data by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

Mr. Sen had said that for decades, India’s statistical machinery enjoyed a high level of reputation for the integrity of the data it produced on a range of economic and social parametres.

In November 2019, MoSPI had decided not to release the Consumer Expenditure Survey results of 2017-18, citing data quality issues.

In another reply to the House, Mr. Singh said two meetings of SCES have been held till now. The first meeting was held on January 7, 2020 and the second was held on February 10, 2021.