New Delhi, October 15: With Professor Abhijit Banerjee being conferred 2019 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, Congress has got a reason to smile after months. Taking this opportunity, Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Tuesday quoted Abhijit Banerjee and took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the state of the county's economy. Sibal advised Modi to "attend to work" and have less "photo ops".

The senior Congress leader took a swipe at PM by mentioning Nobel laureate Prof Abhijit Banerjee and wrote on Twitter, "Is Modiji listening? Abhijit Banerjee: 1) Indian economy on shaky ground. 2) "political interference" in statistical data.3) Average urban and rural consumption gone down - hasn't happened since the seventies. 4) We in (India) are in crisis. Attend to work. Less photo-ops." Nobel Prize 2019 For Economic Sciences: Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer Awarded For Research on Global Poverty.

Here's Kapil Sibal's tweet:

Earlier, Prof Banerjee stated that 'the economy is doing very badly in my view'. The economist told a press conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after winning the prize. Adding more, he pointed put that monetary support should not be a point of concern when the economy is going into a "tailspin". He had said, "When the economy is going into a tailspin, is the time when you don't worry so much about monetary stability, and you worry a little bit more about demand. I think demand is a huge problem right now in the economy."

Adding more, the economist had said, "There is an enormous fight going on in India about which data is right and the government has a particular view of (that) all data that is inconvenient to it is wrong. But nonetheless, I think that this is something that I think even the government is increasingly recognising that there is a problem. So the economy slowing very very fast. How fast we don't know, there is this dispute about data, but I think fast."

It is to be known that Mr Banerjee was conferred with the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences -- along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer -- for his contribution in the alleviation of global poverty.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 15, 2019 04:18 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).