BJP sharpens attack on Congress over Pakistani journalist's claims 

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Friday accused the opposition Congress of having played with national security by granting a visa to a Pakistani journalist who has revealed some information about the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency, in India. Nusrat Mirza had recently claimed in a YouTube interview that he visited India five times during the UPA rule and passed on sensitive information to the ISI.

At a press conference on Friday, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia showed a purported picture of former Vice-President Hamid Ansari sharing a stage with Mirza at a 2009 conference on terrorism held in India. Stepping up an attack on Ansari, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said: “Had Hamid Ansari wanted, he could have said that a person like Mirza should not have been invited to the conference on terrorism. He could have refused to share the stage with a Pakistani journalist.”

The BJP maintained that when an event involving a person holding a constitutional post is organized, the office of that person seeks information about people attending the programme from the government. “In such a situation, would it not be correct to believe that Congress wanted a person from Pakistan to enter India and damage the integrity of India,” said Gaurav Bhatia.

He alleged that the Congress-led UPA government overlooked the national security concern during the program in 2010 and granted the visa to a Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza, who shared India’s sensitive information with ISI. In the YouTube interview, Mirza makes two passing references to Ansari but does not say he had any conversation with the then Vice President. Ansari has dismissed Bhatia’s claims as a “litany of falsehood.”