Former Vice-President and Congress leader Hamid Ansari has issued a statement regarding his meeting with Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza who claimed he spied on India and handed over the information he had gathered during his visits to India between 2005 to 2011. In this statement, Hamid Ansari said that falsehood was unleashed on him by this controversy. He has denied the claimed of Nusrat Mirza that he had invited the Pakistani journalist for a conference in Delhi in 2010, saying that it is the government and the organiser who invites people.
It is notable that Hamid Ansari had inaugurated the International Conference of Jurists on International Terrorism and Human Rights on 11th December 2010 at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, and Mirza had said that Ansari had invited him to this event.
In his statement, Hamid Ansari said, “Yesterday and today a litany of falsehood has been unleashed on me personally in the sections of the media and by the official spokesman of the Bharatiya Janata Party: That as Vice-President of India had invited the Pakistani journalist, Nusrat Mirza and that had met him in a conference in New Delhi on Terrorism, and that while as Ambassador to Iran, I had betrayed the national interest in a matter for which allegations have made by a former official of a Government agency.”
Hamid Ansari further said in his statement, “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 organizers. I never invited him or met him.”
Ex-VP & Congress leader Hamid Ansari issues a statement regarding Pak journalist Nusrat Mirza.
— ANI (@ANI) July 13, 2022
“…falsehood unleashed on me in sec of media&by official spox of BJP…known fact that invitation to foreign dignitaries by VP of India is on advice of Govt generally through MEA…” pic.twitter.com/BMX1Ft50IF
About his work as an Ambassador to Iran, Hamid Ansari said, “My work as Ambassador to Iran was at all times within the knowledge of the Government of the day. am bound by the commitment to national security in such matters and refrain 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.”
It is notable that Hamid Ansari was in the middle of a controversy when Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza was recently seen in an interview in which he claimed that he spied on India and gathered information while he was on some visits to India. Nusrat Mirza claimed that in 2010, he was invited to a seminar on terrorism by then-Vice President Hamid Ansari. However, in the statement issued by Hamid Ansari in this regard, he has put the onus on the then UPA government saying that it is the central government that decides the names of the dignitaries to be invited to the program.
