Former Vice-president Hamid Ansari on Wednesday termed the BJP’s charges as a “ litany of falsehood” and said he “never invited the Pakistani journalist” to India. Ansari was India’s Vice President from 2007-17. The Congress, however, did not respond to the BJP’s allegations.
“Yesterday and today a litany of falsehood has been unleashed on me personally in sections of the media and by the official spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party: that as Vice President of India I had invited the Pakistani journalist, Nusrat Mirza. That I had met him in a conference in New Delhi on ‘terrorism’, and that while as Ambassador to Iran, I had betrayed national interest in a matter for which allegations have been made by a former official of a government agency,” Ansari said in the statement.
“It is a known fact that invitation 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,” the former Vice President said, referring to the Pakistani journalist.
