CDS (II) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 21 of 120

Correct — B, 1, 2 and 4. The Cabinet Resolution of 1 January 2015 that replaced the Planning Commission set out the new body's composition item by item, and three of the four things listed in this question are on that list. The Prime Minister of India is the Chairperson, so item 1 is in. A Governing Council is created, made up of the Chief Ministers of the States together with the Lieutenant Governors of the Union Territories, so item 2 is in — and the stem is quoting the resolution's own formula. A Chief Executive Officer is provided for, appointed by the Prime Minister for a fixed tenure and holding the rank of Secretary to the Government of India, so item 4 is in. Item 3 is the one that is not there. The resolution does provide for ex-officio members drawn from the Union Council of Ministers, but it leaves the choice of which ministers to the Prime Minister; no particular portfolio, and certainly not Rural Development, is written into the composition. The rest of the structure runs to a Vice-Chairperson, full-time members, part-time members from universities and research bodies, special invitees, and Regional Councils convened as and when needed.

• (a)1, 2 and 3 — Swaps the Chief Executive Officer for the Rural Development Minister. The post of Chief Executive Officer is one of the resolution's most distinctive creations — it has no counterpart in the old Planning Commission — while no named ministry is written into the composition.
• (c)1 and 2 only — The cautious pick, right as far as it goes but stopping too soon. It drops the Chief Executive Officer, who is expressly provided for and is appointed by the Prime Minister.
• (d)3 and 4 only — Keeps the one item that is not in the composition and throws out the Prime Minister and the Governing Council, which are the two least disputable elements of the whole arrangement.

NITI Aayog — the National Institution for Transforming India — came into being by executive resolution on 1 January 2015 in place of the Planning Commission of 1950. Neither body is a creature of the Constitution or of any statute. The change was one of function as much as of name: the Planning Commission drew up five-year plans and allocated funds to States, whereas NITI Aayog is a think tank and a forum for what the resolution calls cooperative federalism, designing strategy and evaluating programmes but not distributing money, since that is the Finance Commission's and the Finance Ministry's work.

This is a composition item, and composition items are best learnt as a short list rather than as prose. Chairperson, Governing Council, Regional Councils, special invitees, Vice-Chairperson, full-time members, part-time members, ex-officio ministers, Chief Executive Officer — nine slots, of which the question samples three real ones and one invented one. The tell for item 3 is its specificity: resolutions of this kind name an office by rank or by class, not a single portfolio, so 'Rural Development Minister' reads wrong before you check it. One point to hold with care. The stem quotes the 2015 wording, under which the Governing Council comprises Chief Ministers of all the States and Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories. In practice the Council as it now meets includes the Chief Ministers of the Union Territories that have legislatures — Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir — alongside the Lieutenant Governors of the others, so the modern description of the Council is fuller than the sentence the paper reproduces. Note also that the official primary text of the resolution is hosted on a government site that blocks automated retrieval, so the composition above is stated from standard secondary descriptions of it rather than from the file itself.

• NITI Aayog was set up by a Cabinet Resolution of 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission established in 1950.
• The Prime Minister is its Chairperson; the Vice-Chairperson is nominated by the Prime Minister.
• The Governing Council brings together the Chief Ministers and the Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories; Regional Councils are convened for issues affecting a group of States.
• A Chief Executive Officer is appointed by the Prime Minister for a fixed tenure, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
• It is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body, and unlike the Planning Commission it does not allocate funds to the States.

• Assuming NITI Aayog is a constitutional or statutory body; it rests on a Cabinet resolution, as the Planning Commission did.
• Thinking it allocates funds to States. It advises, designs strategy and evaluates; it does not distribute money.
• Reading a named ministry into the composition, when the resolution provides only for ex-officio ministers chosen by the Prime Minister.

As a composition item, as a Planning Commission comparison, or through the objectives and the indices that NITI Aayog publishes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  NITI Aayog is best described as which one of the following?

  • (a)A constitutional body created by the 97th Amendment
  • (b)A statutory body set up by an Act of Parliament
  • (c)A non-constitutional, non-statutory body created by a Cabinet resolution
  • (d)An autonomous body under the Ministry of Finance

  Answer(c) A non-constitutional, non-statutory body created by a Cabinet resolution — the resolution of 1 January 2015, in the same way the Planning Commission had been created by resolution in 1950.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following functions was performed by the Planning Commission but is not performed by NITI Aayog?

  • (a)Advising the Union Government on policy
  • (b)Allocating funds to States and Union Territories
  • (c)Monitoring the implementation of programmes
  • (d)Preparing strategy documents for the economy

  Answer(b) Allocating funds to States and Union Territories — that role passed to the Finance Ministry and the Finance Commission, leaving NITI Aayog as a think tank and a forum for the States.