Renowned economist Rajiv Kumar was named as the new vice chairman of NITI Aayog on Saturday night. This comes four days after Arvind Panagariya resigned from the post.
Kumar will report directly to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who is the chairperson of NITI Aayog.
Rajiv Kumar, who holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University, is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR).
Earlier, he was secretary general of the FICCI and had also served as Director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
He was a member of the National Security Advisory Board between 2006 and 2008.
He has also served as the chief economist of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and held senior positions in the the Asian Development Bank, the Indian Ministry of Industries, and the Ministry of Finance.
On Tuesday, Panagariya had resigned as the vice chairman of the Niti Aayog, and said he would return to academics in the United States.
