The Narendra Modi government has brought back Parameswaran Iyer, a retired IAS officer, as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the NITI Aayog with Amitabh Kant completing his over six-year-long stint.
Iyer is considered a highly trusted officer of the Prime Minister. This is the second time that Iyer has been brought in by the Modi government, after he was appointed as the incharge of the PM’s signature Swachh Bharat Mission in 2016. Iyer was then working with the World Bank after taking premature retirement in 2009 from the IAS in which he served in the Uttar Pradesh cadre.
As the secretary of the Swachh Bharat Mission since 2016, Iyer executed PM Modi’s dream of turning the country open-defecation free (ODF) in 2019 before resigning in 2020 and returning to the United States for personal reasons. He had got an extension in the post till 2021 but quit early. Last year, Iyer wrote a memoir, Method in the Madness, about his life experience inside and outside the government.
“While executing the Swachh Bharat Mission, Iyer had developed a close equation with many chief ministers and secretaries across the country. That experience would serve him well in the new role of CEO of Niti Aayog. His appointment comes amidst a big governance and policy push by the government in the run-up to 2024,” a senior government official at the Centre told News18. Iyer has been appointed as CEO, NITI Aayog, for a period of two years for now.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the “trump card” in the campaign for the Swachh Bharat mission and he was strategically used as the “communicator-in-chief” to appeal to people to join the revolution, Iyer had written in his memoir released last year. “Jaiye, aur Bharat ko swachh banaiye (Go ahead and make India clean),” Modi told Iyer during their first meeting on April 30, 2016, when he returned to India, according to the book.
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