Slamming the revision of GDP data under the UPA as a "bad joke", the Congress on Thursday alleged that the Niti Aayog has done disservice to the nation with its "hatchet job" at the behest of the Modi Government and demanded that the body be disbanded.
The opposition party also hit out at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for defending the exercise, which it termed as a "brazen assault on the very sanctity of Indian statistics".
"Niti Aayog's revised GDP numbers are a joke. They are a bad joke. Actually they are worse than a bad joke. The numbers are the result of a hatchet job. Now that Niti Aayog has done the hatchet job, it is time to wind up the utterly worthless body," Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said.
Senior party leader and former Union minister Anand Sharma also lashed out at the planning body saying, "by fudging the GDP data to massage the ego of Prime Minister Modi and hide the miserable performance and mismanagement of the Indian economy, the Ministry of Statistics and Niti Aayog have done a disservice to the nation."
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said "the venerable Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) has now been converted into a NAMO (Numbers Adjustment and Manipulation Organisation)", adding "Mahalanobis must be fuming"
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