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New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Saturday slammed the BJP for comments by its leaders on 2019 Nobel Prize laureate Abhijit Banerjee, saying that instead of running a ‘comedy circus’, the BJP should focus on reviving the economy.
Banerjee, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) alumni, was on Monday awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, along with his wife, French-American economist Esther Duflo and American economist Michael Kremer.
On Saturday, in a tweet in Hindi on her Twitter account, the Congress General Secretary for UP East said, “Instead of fulfilling their own responsibilities, BJP leaders are busy trying to belie the Nobel laureate’s achievement. The Nobel laureate did his work with honesty and won the prize.”
She added, “Economy is collapsing. You should focus on reviving it, instead of running a comedy circus.”
Ever since his name was announced for the award, several BJP leaders, including Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, have targeted the Nobel Prize laureate. Speaking at an event in Pune on Friday, Goyal said that while he congratulated Banerjee for his achievement, but said that he (Banerjee) was a ‘Left-leaner’ whose ideology has been rejected by the people. The comment was in reference to Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), a proposed social welfare scheme in the Congress 2019 Lok Sabha elections’ manifesto.
Banerjee was one of the leading brains behind the scheme.
Besides Goyal, he has also been attacked by West Bengal BJP leader Rahul Sinha, who wondered if having a foreign wife was a criterion to win the Nobel Prize, and Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy, who said that thankfully, it wasn’t NYAY Banerjee won the Nobel for.
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