Eminent economist S Mahendra Dev has taken charge as Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), marking the end of a leadership vacuum at the top of the advisory body since last November.Dev, former Vice Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, succeeds Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery, who had been holding additional charge of EAC-PM following the death of Bibek Debroy, the council’s first full-time chairman.The Cabinet Secretariat had earlier announced that the prime minister approved the reconstitution of the EAC-PM for a period of two years or until further orders, whichever is earlier.While full-time members Sanjeev Sanyal, Sanjay Kumar Mishra and Shamika Ravi have been retained, the reconstituted council includes several new part-time members. These include Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic advisor at State Bank of India.Other part-time members inducted into the council are Rakesh Mohan, Sajid Chenoy, Neelkanth Misra, Nilesh Shah, TT Ram Mohan, KV Raju, Chetan Ghate, Pami Dua, Pulak Ghosh, and Gourav Vallabh, according to PTI.Dev has also served as editor of Economic and Political Weekly and as an independent director at Axis Bank. He holds MPhil and PhD degrees from the Delhi School of Economics, and completed post-doctoral research at Yale University in the US.An accomplished development economist, Dev has written and edited 22 books and authored about 150 research publications across fields including macroeconomic policy, agriculture, and rural development.