BJP uses photo to back its claim of Hamid Ansari's connection with Pak journalist

New Delhi, July 15: The BJP on Friday hit back at ex-Vice President Hamid Ansari over his alleged connection with a Pakistani journalist and cited a photograph of both allegedly sharing stage during a conference in India.

Pakistani journalist Nusrat Mirza has claimed that he had visited India five times during the UPA rule and passed on sensitive information collected here to his country's spy agency ISI.

Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters on Friday, the party's national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia showed a picture of Hamid Ansari allegedly sharing a stage with Nusrat Mirza at a conference on terrorism here in 2009.

People holding constitutional posts should act responsibly and should have not shared the stage with Nusrat Mirza, Bhatia said.

Hitting out at the Congress, Bhatia said intelligence clearance is required for holding such programmes and inviting dignitaries from abroad.

For a programme of someone holding a constitutional post, protocol dictates that his office gathers information about those involved in the event. In such a situation, would it not be correct to believe that the Congress wanted a person from Pakistan to enter India and hurt its integrity, he alleged.

Nusrat Mirza allegedly said that he had visited India on Hamid Ansari's invitations and also met him.

Ansari, however, has dismissed the charge as a "litany of falsehood" and said he never met or invited the journalist.

Earlier, citing Nusrat Mirza's claims that Hamid Ansari shared many "sensitive and highly classified" information with him, the BJP had accused the former Vice President of inviting the Pakistani journalist to India who has claimed to have spied for the ISI.