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Updated: Oct 22, 2019 13:22 IST

Abhijit Banerjee, this year’s Nobel Prize winner for Economics, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.

The Indian-origin Nobel laureate called on the PM in his first visit to the country after the announcement of the award last week.

Calling the meeting with Banerjee “excellent”, the prime minister said they had a “healthy and extensive interaction on various subjects”.

“Excellent meeting with Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee. His passion towards human empowerment is clearly visible. We had a healthy and extensive interaction on various subjects. India is proud of his accomplishments. Wishing him the very best for his future endeavours,” the PM said in a tweet.

Excellent meeting with Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee. His passion towards human empowerment is clearly visible. We had a healthy and extensive interaction on various subjects. India is proud of his accomplishments. Wishing him the very best for his future endeavours. pic.twitter.com/SQFTYgXyBX — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) 22 October 2019

Abhijit Banerjee, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, were awarded the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for their approach to alleviate global poverty.

A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Banerjee studied at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University.

The Nobel winner has come in for some criticism as well for his comments on the Indian economy. In a presentation recently, Banerjee had said that the Indian economy was doing “very badly” and it was “going into a tailspin”.

Reacting to this statement, Union minister Piyush Goyal last week said that he did not take Banerjee’s criticism of India’s economic policies and the economic slowdown seriously “as he belongs to Left ideology which has been rejected by India.”

The Nobel laureate landed in Delhi on Saturday. Since then, it has been a hectic routine for him including a visit to his alma mater Jawaharlal Nehru University, a series of interviews, programmes and a book release function.

Banerjee will go to Kolkata - his home town - on Tuesday evening to meet his family. He will fly out of India in the early hours of Thursday.