Refuting the allegations that he had invited a Pakistani journalist who claimed to have spied for ISI to India, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari said a “litany of falsehood” had been unleashed against him in media and by a BJP spokesman on Wednesday.
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According to the BJP’s citation of statements made by a former RAW official, he had “compromise” India’s interest as India’s ambassador to Iran, which Hamid Ansari denied in a statement.
It was Gaurav Bhatia, an official BJP spokesman, who had earlier today pressed Ansari and Congress leaders to come clean on the allegations of Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza, who claimed to have visited India five times during the UPA reign and passed on vital material to his Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.
Bhatia referenced Mirza’s alleged remarks that he had visited India on Ansari’s invites and met with him, but the former vice president denied the charges.
“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,” Ansari said in his response.
“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 that his activity as ambassador to Iran was always in the government’s knowledge. He said that he is obligated by his commitment to national security on such topics and would abstain from commenting on them.
“The Government of India has all the information and is the only authority to tell the truth. It is a matter of record that after my stint in Tehran, I was appointed India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. My work there has been acknowledged at home and abroad,” Ansari said.
(With inputs from PTI)
