Since January 2015, when it was created, Niti Aayog has been so far led by three Vice-Chairpersons and five Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). The Vice-Chairperson is the operational head in Cabinet rank; the CEO, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Secretary rank, runs the executive machinery.

Lahiri will be the fourth Vice-Chairman of Niti Aayog.

He brings the longest and varied policymaking experience of any Vice-Chairman to date — Chief Economic Adviser (2002–07) under both the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments, member of the Fifteenth Finance Commission, former Director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), and currently a sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator from Balurghat in West Bengal. He is the first Vice-Chair with elected political experience: a unique technocrat-politician hybrid built precisely for the fiscal-federalism architecture that Viksit Bharat 2047 demands.

The Reshuffle

The Cabinet Secretariat order of 25 April 2026 effected the most sweeping reconstitution since the founding of the Niti Aayog. Barring former Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, who was appointed full time member of Niti Aayog in March 2025, all other members have been newly inducted.  

Prof. Ramesh Chand, Dr. V.K. Saraswat, Dr. V.K. Paul and Dr. Arvind Virmani, who served as members Niti Aayog have been replaced.

The New Members

K.V. Raju (Member, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council), economic advisor to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, earlier Karnataka); brings rare hands-on experience of state-level reform. Gobardhan Das (Director, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research-Bhopal; molecular scientist) is the first laboratory-bench scientist on the Aayog. Abhay Karandikar (Secretary, Department of Science and Technology; former Director, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur; pioneer of indigenous 5G; carries the deep-tech and Artificial Intelligence brief). M. Srinivas (Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) inherits public health at a moment when India's burden has shifted from communicable to non-communicable disease.

NITI Aayog And Its Tasks

One, much would depend on the Niti Aayog’s prescription to boost the growth engine. The immediate task would be to ensure an 8%-plus growth for two decades, lifting investment-to-GDP above 35% and manufacturing share toward 25%. Lahiri and Gauba must play their appointed role.

Second, the government think tank will have to master the science of scale — semiconductors, AI, green hydrogen, biotechnology — the strategic technologies on which developed-country status will turn. 

Third, close the human-development gap — no country has crossed this threshold with India's current health and education indicators. 

Besides, it will have to focus on rural transformation — doubling farm incomes, climate-resilient agriculture, and aspirational blocks built on the districts programme. 

Importantly, it will hold the long view — in a polity tilted to the next election cycle, Niti's most important institutional virtue is the courage to think in twenty-five-year horizons and publish unflinching evaluations of what is and is not working.

From Niti To Nistha

Lahiri has promised to serve with Niti, Niyat and Nistha — policy, intent, and dedication. These three words deserve to be more than rhetoric; they describe the only viable theory of an institution that can neither tax, nor spend, nor command, nor legislate.

There is a deeper truth here that Indians have been slow to admit.

On 15 August 2014, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced dissolution of Planning Commission. The Cabinet resolution of 1 January 2015 created National Institution for Transforming India or Niti — policy, ethics, prudence — replaced the imperative connotations of 'Planning'.

The erstwhile Planning Commission did not fail because it planned. It failed because, having no constitutional standing, no electoral legitimacy, and no statutory teeth, it borrowed power from the Cabinet purse and used it to discipline the states. It became coercive precisely because it lacked legitimacy.

The IEO's Verdict 

The Independent Evaluation Office took the extraordinary step of recommending abolition of the Planning Commission. Its June 2014 report advocated a Reform and Solutions Commission — a small think-tank, free of ministerial layering, serving as a 'solutions exchange' for states best practices. Almost every element is recognisable in Niti Aayog's eventual architecture.

Niti Aayog's quiet revolution is that it has, mostly, accepted this discipline.

Yet a republic that will turn 100 in 2047 needs more than a well-designed think-tank. It needs an institution willing to tell governments — both Union and states — what they would rather not hear: that growth alone will not close the human-development gap; that ranking states is no substitute for empowering them. The new Niti Aayog has the talent. The harder question is whether it will have the courage. For India to be Viksit by 2047, Niti must speak truth before it speaks comfort.

Arun Maira — former Member of the Planning Commission (2009–14), and one of independent India's most thoughtful institutional philosophers wrote in 2014 what still reads like a marching order: 'Change the way people work and think, and institutions and nations will change.' The Frankenstein has been buried.

What we must now build is a thinking, breathing, self-questioning institution worthy of the republic it serves. Niti — wisdom — is its name. Niyat — intent — is its compass. Nistha — fidelity to truth — is the test by which history will judge it. The work begins now.

(The writer is a former civil servant. Views expressed are personal.)