Rajiv Kumar, the vice chairman of the NITI Aayog, resigned on Friday after being appointed to India’s policy think tank five years ago.

Suman Bery, an economist, has taken his place.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Personnel, the cabinet’s appointments committee accepted Rajiv Kumar’s resignation and appointed Suman Bery as a full-time member of the NITI Aayog, and later as vice chairperson, effective May 1.

After his predecessor Arvind Panagariya left the National Institution for Transforming India, commonly known as NITI Aayog, which replaced the Planning Commission, Kumar took over as vice chairman in August 2017.

Suman Bery, who is expected to follow Rajiv Kumar, was the director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, or NCAER, for ten years, from 2001 to 2011, one of the country’s main independent policy research institutions.

Suman Bery is a Global Scholar in the Asia programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and is a senior visiting fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. He is a Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic policy research institute.

He was also a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, India’s Statistical Commission, and the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Technical Advisory Committee.