Millions of Indians are proud of your work: Rahul Gandhi to Abhijit Banerjee

New Delhi : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday tweeted in support of Abhijit Banerjee, a day after the Nobel Prize-winning economist spoke to NDTV and raised his objection to Union Minister Piyush Goyal questioning his professionalism. 

"Please be certain that millions of Indians are proud..." Mr Gandhi wrote on his official Twitter account. On Friday, Piyush Goyal had said that Banerjee's praise for the Congress' NYAY scheme shows his "totally Left-leaning" thinking and his work had been rejected by the people of India.

The NYAY or Nyuntam Aay Yojana is a minimum income guarantee scheme that headlined the Congress manifesto for the national election earlier this year. The party crashed in the polls. Rahul Gandhi, in his tweet congratulating Mr Banerjee for his Nobel, credited him with the NYAY plan.

"Dear Mr Banerjee... These bigots are blinded by hatred and have no idea what a professional is. You cannot explain it to them, even if you tried for a decade. Please be certain that millions of Indians are proud of your work," Gandhi tweeted.

On Saturday, Abhijit Banerjee told NDTV, "If the BJP government, like the Congress party, had asked what were the numbers on the fraction of people under a particular income, would I have not told them the truth? In terms of being a professional, I want to be professional with everyone."

"I am not partisan in my economy thinking," he continued, pointing out he had worked with the Gujarat pollution board back when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was still a Chief Minister.

"...we actually had an excellent experience. I would say that they were willing to engage with the evidence and they implemented policies that followed with that experience," he said.