National Statistical Commission

January 30, 2019

National Statistical Commission was established in 2005 based on the recommendations of the Rangarajan Commission. The commission was established through an executive order and it works under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
The Rangarajan Commission recommended the establishment of a permanent National Commission on Statistics to serve as a nodal and empowered body for all core statistical activities of the country, evolve, monitor and enforce statistical priorities and standards and to ensure statistical co-ordination among the different agencies involved.

Composition of the Commission

The Commission consists of a part-time Chairperson, four part-time Members, an ex-officio Member and a secretary. The Chief Statistician of India who is the Head of the National Statistical Office is the Secretary of the Commission and the Chief Executive Officer of the NITI Aayog is the ex-officio Member of the commission.

Mandate of the Commission

The mandate of the National Statistical commission include:

To identify the core statistics, which are of national importance and are critical to the development of the economy.
To constitute professional committees or working groups to assist the Commission on various technical issues.
To evolve national policies and priorities relating to the statistical system.
To evolve standard statistical concepts, definitions, classifications and methodologies in different areas in statistics and lay down national quality standards on core statistics.
To evolve national strategies for the collection, tabulation and dissemination of core statistics, including the release calendar for various datasets.
To evolve national strategies for human resource development on official statistics including information technology and communication needs of the statistical system.
To evolve measures for improving public trust in official statistics.
To evolve measures for effective coordination with State Governments and Union Territory Administrations on statistical activities including the strengthening of existing institutional mechanisms.
To exercise statistical co-ordination between Ministries, Departments and other agencies of the Central Government.
To exercise statistical audit over the statistical activities to ensure quality and integrity of the statistical products.
To recommend to the Central Government, or any State Government, as the case may be, measures to effectively implement the standards, strategies and other measures related to statistics.
To advise the Government on the requirement of legislative measures on statistical matters including the statute for the National Statistical Commission
To monitor and review the functioning of the statistical system in the light of the laid down policies, standards and methodology.

The commission has also been entrusted with the functions of the Governing Council of the National Sample Survey Office which include overseeing the conduct of National Sample Surveys (NSS) on various socioeconomic subjects through the NSSO and the State Directorate of Economics and Statistics.

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