Team News Riveting
New Delhi, July 13
A Pakistani journalist’s claim stirred political cauldron in the country as former Vice President Hamid Ansari swung into action on Wednesday to refute the allegation.
Nusrat Mirza, a Pakistani journalist, had claimed that he was invited to India by Hamid and he had have spied for ISI. Earlier, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia held a press conference and asked Ansari and the Congress to come clean on the claims of Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza that he had visited India five times during the UPA rule and passed on sensitive information collected here to his Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.
A “litany of falsehood” has been unleashed against him in sections of media and by a BJP spokesperson, Ansari said in a statement.
In a statement, he also rejected the allegation made by the BJP citing comments of a former RAW functionary that he had compromised national interest as India’s ambassador to Iran.
In his rebuttal, Ansari said, “It is a known fact that invitations to foreign dignitaries by the Vice-President of India are on the advice of the government generally through the Ministry of External Affairs.”
“I had inaugurated the Conference on Terrorism, on December 11, 2010, the ‘International Conference of Jurists on International Terrorism and Human Rights’. As is the normal practice, the list of invitees would have been drawn by the organisers. I never invited him or met him,” added Ansari, who was India’s vice president between 2007-17.
The former vice president said his work as ambassador to Iran was at all times within the knowledge of the government of the day.
He said he was bound by the commitment to national security in such matters and would refrain from commenting on them.
