Former Union minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday criticised the Centre after two independent members of the National Statistical Commission resigned this week, leaving the panel with no members. Two members had resigned after the government allegedly failed to publish a report on employment that was readied last month.

“One more venerable institution died on 29 January 2019 owing to malicious negligence by the government,” Chidambaram tweeted. “We mourn the death of the National Statistical Commission and remember with gratitude its valiant fight to release untainted GDP data and employment data. May the NSC [National Statistical Commission] rest in peace until it is re-born again!”

PC Mohanan, an independent member of the National Statistical Commission who resigned on Monday, said that he was not taken seriously and felt sidelined over the past few months, NDTV reported on Wednesday.

Mohanan, who was also the acting chairperson of the body, and another member, JV Meenakshi, resigned this week, leaving only ex-officio member Amitabh Kant and chief statistician Pravin Srivastava on the commission.

“We found that the commission was not very effective in discharging whatever it was supposed to do,” Mohanan told NDTV. “And in recent times we thought we were being sidelined or we are not taken very seriously. It is an apex body for all statistics in the country. That purpose was not really being served. That was our feeling,” he said.

“The government not releasing the report is one of the reasons,” Mohanan had told Scroll.in on Tuesday. “We have approved the report, but they have not released it, I don’t know why.”

The National Sample Survey Office’s Periodic Labour Force Survey report for 2017-18, which provides data on employment and unemployment, was vetted by the National Statistical Commission in December but the report is yet to be released.