29th CoCSSO opens in Chandigarh with focus on ‘Strengthening Local Level Governance’
Chandigarh, September 25, 2025: The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) inaugurated the 29th Conference of Central and State Statistical Organizations (CoCSSO) in Chandigarh, a two‑day forum aimed at bolstering Centre–State coordination to deliver reliable, timely, and credible statistics for evidence‑based governance.
Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini underscored the pivotal role of data in nation‑building, citing Haryana’s data‑driven delivery and transparency initiatives and noting that schemes succeed only when backed by trustworthy statistics. Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said good governance begins at the grassroots and requires granular, credible local data to plan, monitor progress, and enable course correction, making stronger local statistical systems indispensable.
Hosted under the theme ‘Strengthening Local Level Governance,’ the conference has brought together around 350 delegates from over 30 States/UTs, Central ministries and departments, academic and research bodies such as ISI, IASRI and ICAR, as well as multilateral partners including the World Bank and UN agencies to deliberate on upgrading statistical systems for Viksit Bharat.
Dignitaries at the inaugural included CM Nayab Singh Saini; Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh; Himachal Pradesh State Planning Board Deputy Chairman Bhawani Singh Pathania; MoSPI Secretary Dr Saurabh Garg; and the Chief Secretaries of Haryana and Punjab, Anurag Rastogi and K.A.P. Sinha. Speakers emphasized collaboration, higher data frequency and timeliness, district‑level granularity, and harmonization for national and international comparability.
Marking the occasion, MoSPI released “Children in India 2025” and “Environmental Accounting on Forest – 2025,” and launched a revamped ministry website, the iOS version of the GoIStats app, the PAIMANA portal for Central Sector Infrastructure Projects, and the NMDS 2.0 metadata portal as a unified, standards‑aligned repository.
Across two days, technical sessions will cover State statistical capacity‑building, data infrastructure, innovative data management, sub‑national SDG monitoring, and dataset harmonization to advance local‑level governance and strengthen India’s statistical ecosystem, with the conference concluding on September 26.