New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday slammed sections of the Narendra Modi government as "bigots", a day after Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee expressed unhappiness over Union Minister Piyush Goyal questioning his "professionalism".

"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," Gandhi tweeted adding that millions of Indian were proud of the work done by the economist.

While Gandhi has praised the Nobel laureate and his contribution in formulating Congress' NYAY scheme that became the party's poll plank in the run up to the 2019 general elections, Goyal on Friday said, "Abhijit Banerjee won the Nobel Prize, I congratulate him. But you all know what his understanding is. His thinking is totally left-leaning. He had praised the NYAY scheme effusively, but the people of India rejected his thinking."

Banerjee defended himself in an interview to a news channel a day later and said, "I am not partisan in my economic thinking."