On Tuesday a Twitter account (@abhijitBanerj) appeared on the microblogging site claiming to be Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee soon after his chat with Congress’ Rahul Gandhi. The Twitter account attracted a lot of attention from the users. The account has more than 28,000 followers on the bird app now.
Many others questioned the validity and authenticity of the account as well.
A BBC journalist, Soutik Biswas on Wednesday tweeted a messages from Abhijit Banerjee in which the Nobel Laurette denies being on Twitter and claimed he is being impersonated.
“Message from economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: If you are on social media will you publicise the fact that I am being impersonated on Twitter as AbhijitBanerj. I am not on twitter”
Message from economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: If you are on social media will you publicise the fact that I am being impersonated on Twitter as AbhijitBanerj. I am not on twitter@Twitter #AbhijitBanerjee
— Soutik Biswas (@soutikBBC) May 6, 2020
TMC Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra from Krishnanagar also clarified that both the accounts in the name of Abhijit Banerjee on Twitter are fake.
Hello twitter folks – passing on a message from the real Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Laureate & Economist to say he is NOT on twitter and that BOTH@AbhijitBanrjee and @AbhijitBanerj
are fake accounts in the process of being reported to twitter pic.twitter.com/Z2dFTiY5PL— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) May 6, 2020
Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee in a conversation with former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the government should put money in the hands of the bottom 60 per cent of the population post-lockdown to spur demand and trigger growth besides announcing a big stimulus package. He advocated waiving off loan repayments for small businesses in the June quarter.
Banerjee said the three-month moratorium on debt repayments announced by the RBI for the MSME sector was a wise decision and argued more should be done. “We could even say that debt payments for this quarter will be cancelled and will be taken care of by the government,” he said.
