Consider the following statements about NITI Aayog: 1. It was established on January 1, 2014. 2. It was created by a resolution of Union Cabinet. 3. President of India is the Chairman of NITI Aayog. Which of the above statements is/are true?
- (a)1 and 3
- (b)Only 1
- (c)Only 2
- (d)2 and 3
Correct — C, Only 2.
The founding instrument is a Government of India resolution of 1 January 2015, approved by the Union Cabinet, which makes only statement 2 true. Statement 1 keeps the right day but pulls the year back to 2014, and statement 3 puts the wrong office in the chair.
The idea to carry away is that NITI Aayog exists by executive resolution — not by the Constitution and not by an Act of Parliament. The Planning Commission it replaced stood on the same kind of footing, a Government of India resolution of 1950.
The Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairperson, and the Prime Minister also appoints the Vice-Chairperson and the Chief Executive Officer.
Testing each of the three statements on its own, instead of accepting a pair once one half looks right, is what separates option (c) from option (d) here.
- (a)1 and 3 — This option needs both the 2014 date and the President in the chair, and neither holds. The resolution creating NITI Aayog carries the date 1 January 2015.
The year 2014 belongs to the announcement that the Planning Commission would be replaced, made from the Red Fort on 15 August 2014 — an intention stated, not a body created. Statement 3 fails separately: the Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairperson.
- (b)Only 1 — This keeps the wrong year and throws out the one statement that is true. Statement 1 has the correct day of the month but the wrong year, so it cannot stand on its own.
Rejecting statement 2 means treating a Cabinet resolution as too slight a thing to have founded a body of this profile. It is not: an executive resolution, rather than a statute or a constitutional provision, is precisely NITI Aayog's legal basis.
- (d)2 and 3 — Statement 2 is correct, so half of this option is sound and survives any check aimed only at that statement. Statement 3 is what sinks it.
The office named in the founding resolution is the Prime Minister, who is ex-officio Chairperson of NITI Aayog and who appoints its Vice-Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer. The President's appointing role attaches to bodies such as the Finance Commission under Article 280, not to this one.
Indian public bodies sit on one of three footings. A constitutional body is named in the Constitution itself, such as the Finance Commission under Article 280.
A statutory body is created by an Act of Parliament or a State legislature. An executive body is set up by a resolution or order of the government, with no statute behind it.
NITI Aayog belongs to the third category. It was constituted by a resolution of the Union Cabinet, which is why its powers are advisory and why it can be reshaped or wound up by the same executive route that made it.
NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission, and the change was one of function as much as of name. The Planning Commission drew up Five Year Plans and had a hand in transferring plan funds to the States.
NITI Aayog was designed instead as a policy think tank and a forum for what the resolution frames as cooperative federalism, with the States sitting in its Governing Council.
The legal-footing point matters because both bodies rest on the same kind of instrument. A government resolution made the Planning Commission in 1950, and a government resolution ended it and created its successor.
- NITI Aayog came into existence through a Government of India resolution of 1 January 2015, approved by the Union Cabinet; its full name is the National Institution for Transforming India.
- It replaced the Planning Commission, which had itself been set up by a Government of India resolution in March 1950 rather than by statute.
- The Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairperson of NITI Aayog.
- The Vice-Chairperson is appointed by the Prime Minister; Arvind Panagariya was appointed to the post in January 2015 and stepped down in 2017.
- The Chief Executive Officer is appointed by the Prime Minister for a fixed tenure and holds the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
- The Governing Council now comprises the Chief Ministers of the States and of Union Territories with legislature, plus the Lieutenant Governors of the other Union Territories.
- NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body; its authority rests on an executive resolution and its role is advisory.
The middle claim is the one that survives the check, which is why the key reads Only 2.
- The day is right and the year is not: 1 January is correct, but the resolution is of 2015, while 2014 is the year the replacement of the Planning Commission was announced.
- 'Created by a resolution of Union Cabinet' can read as too informal to be a real founding, when for NITI Aayog it is the exact and correct description.
- Chairing and appointing both sit with the Prime Minister here; swapping in the President turns statement 3 from false-looking into simply false.
- Option (d) carries the one true statement alongside a false one, so confirming statement 2 and stopping there leads straight to the wrong code.
- Assuming a body's importance implies a statute behind it will misclassify NITI Aayog, and will misclassify the Planning Commission the same way.
This idea surfaces in two shapes. One asks for the founding facts head-on — the date, the instrument that created it, who chairs it, who appoints the Vice-Chairperson or the CEO.
The other embeds NITI Aayog in a classification test: whether a named body is constitutional, statutory or executive, or what it replaced and how its role differs from its predecessor's.
The statement-and-code framing used here lets a paper set one true founding fact beside a shifted date or a substituted office, so several of the codes on offer differ by a single statement.
CDS_GK_2023_II_Q212023Same founding instrument, named by the same date — the CDS item opens with 'the Cabinet Resolution of 1st January, 2015', which is the fact our statement 2 turns on and the date our statement 1 gets wrong. What differs is the target: that question tests who sits inside the body, including the Governing Council and the CEO appointed by the Prime Minister, while ours tests when it was made, by what instrument, and who chairs it.
CDS_GK_2021_I_Q492021Same institution, different axis. That question works on what NITI Aayog is meant to do, asking which listed item is not among its objectives, while ours works on how it was constituted and who heads it. Read together they cover the two halves of the topic — the body's legal origin and its functional mandate — and neither settles the other.
UPSC_2015_GS1_Q422015Same body and the same moment of creation, approached from the other side: it asks what NITI Aayog replaced, where ours asks how NITI Aayog itself came about. The pairing is useful because the answer to that question, the Planning Commission, was created by the same route we describe here — a government resolution rather than a statute. That one is a single-fact recall item; ours is a three-statement code question.
MPPSC_2022_PRE_PaperI_Q272022Same President-versus-Prime-Minister distinction that decides our statement 3, but applied to a different office. The MPPSC item asks who appoints the Vice-Chairperson of NITI Aayog; ours asks who chairs it. Both answers point to the Prime Minister, so the two questions test one habit — checking which authority the founding resolution actually names — through two separate facts.
- practice — not a real PYQ
NITI Aayog owes its existence to which one of the following?
- (a)A provision of the Constitution of India
- (b)An Act of Parliament
- (c)A resolution of the Union Cabinet
- (d)An ordinance promulgated by the President
Answerc — NITI Aayog was constituted by a resolution of the Union Cabinet dated 1 January 2015, which is what makes it an executive body rather than a constitutional or statutory one.(a) fails because the Constitution names bodies such as the Finance Commission under Article 280 but does not establish NITI Aayog. (b) fails because no statute was enacted for it, unlike the National Human Rights Commission under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.
(d) fails because an ordinance is a law-making device and was not the route used.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following statements about NITI Aayog: 1. It was set up on 1 January 2015. 2. The Prime Minister is its ex-officio Chairperson. 3. Its Vice-Chairperson is appointed by the President of India. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 and 2 only
- (b)2 and 3 only
- (c)1 and 3 only
- (d)1, 2 and 3
Answera — The founding resolution is dated 1 January 2015 and makes the Prime Minister the ex-officio Chairperson, so statements 1 and 2 both hold.Statement 3 is wrong: the Vice-Chairperson is appointed by the Prime Minister. That single error takes down (b), (c) and (d), each of which carries statement 3.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The body that NITI Aayog replaced was itself brought into being by which one of the following?
- (a)An Act of Parliament passed in 1950
- (b)A resolution of the Government of India in March 1950
- (c)Article 280 of the Constitution
- (d)A directive of the National Development Council
Answerb — The Planning Commission was set up by a Government of India resolution in March 1950, giving it the same executive footing that NITI Aayog later took.(a) fails because no statute created it. (c) fails because Article 280 establishes the Finance Commission, a different body on a constitutional footing. (d) fails on sequence as well as substance: the National Development Council was itself constituted in 1952, after the Planning Commission already existed.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under the resolution of 1 January 2015, the Governing Council of NITI Aayog comprises the Chief Ministers of all the States along with which one of the following?
- (a)Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories
- (b)The Governors of all the States
- (c)The Chairperson of the Finance Commission
- (d)The Speakers of the State Legislative Assemblies
Answera — The founding resolution describes the Governing Council as comprising the Chief Ministers of all the States and Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories, placing the States and Union Territories inside the body itself. The composition was amended later, and Union Territories with a legislature are now represented by their Chief Ministers.(b) fails because Governors are not named in that composition. (c) fails because the Finance Commission is a separate constitutional body under Article 280 with its own remit.
(d) fails because Assembly Speakers belong to the legislative side of the States and have no seat in this executive council.