Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee received a rousing welcome at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport when he reached the city on Tuesday evening for the first time since winning the global award to meet his mother.
He was received by Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim and several senior ministers of the state government.
People from all walks of life carrying posters, pictures and placards gathered at the airport to welcome Banerjee. Slogans of 'Bharater Gorbo (pride of India) Abhijit Banerjee' echoed in the airport.
Flower petals were showered on him by many who had gathered at the airport, where there was tight police security.
Banerjee, an Indian-born American professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has won the Nobel Prize in economics for 2019 jointly with French-American Esther Duflo, his wife and Michael Kremer of Harvard University for "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".
Banerjee will be at his paternal home in the city, where his mother Nirmala Banerjee, an economist in her own right stays. He will be in the city on October 23 and leave in the early hours of October 24.