Op Sindoor paused on Pak’s appeals: India rejects Trump’s mediation claims

The government on Monday rejected US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of mediation in the cessation of May hostilities between India and Pakistan and said Operation Sindoor, launched to avenge the April 22 Pahalgam killings, was paused on Pakistan’s pleas after successful achievement of the stated political and military objectives.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, both participating in a discussion on Operation Sindoor in the Lok Sabha, dismissed the US claims of intervention to stop the nuclear-armed neighbours, with Rajnath announcing that “no harm came to any important asset".

The Defence Minister opened the “Special Discussion on India’s strong, successful and decisive Operation Sindoor in response to the terrorist attack in Pahalgam", in the Lok Sabha and said India had agreed to pause the operation not stop it.

“We agreed to pause, not end Op Sindoor after Pakistan appealed to stop hostilities following IAF’s attacks on its air bases. Pakistan accepted defeat and pleaded, saying ‘ab rok dijiye maharaj’ (please stop now)," Rajnath said at the start of a crucial debate that saw Jaishankar inform Parliament that there was no phone call between PM Narendra Modi and Trump between April 22 (when the US President called to express solidarity in the wake of the Pahalgam attack) and June 17, when he dialled the PM after inability to meet during the G7 meeting.

Jaishankar also said the PM clearly told Trump that the ceasefire was reached directly between the two militaries without any US mediation.

Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and other Opposition top guns in attendance, Rajnath said the objective of Operation Sindoor was to target terror nurseries in Pakistan and avenge the victims of Pahalgam attack and not wage a war or expand territory.

“The political and military objectives of the mission were successfully achieved. So to say that it was stopped under pressure is baseless and wrong. The overall politico-military objective of Operation Sindoor was to punish Pakistan’s proxy war of terrorism. Our goal was not to wage war but to decimate the adversary by using non-escalatory force. On the morning of May 10, Pakistan accepted defeat and said ‘ab rok dijiye maharaj’," Rajnath said narrating the sequence of events starting from the intervening night of May 7 and 8 when Op Sindoor was launched to May 10 when fire between India and Pakistan was halted.

He said India accepted Pakistan’s appeals to stop hostilities with the caveat that the operation would only be paused, not ended and if Pakistan attempted any misadventure in the future, the mission would resume. Thereafter, the two DGMOs spoke and the operation was paused, he explained.

The minister also reacted to the Congress-led Opposition’s queries about combat losses and said when pursuing lofty goals of national security, the country should not focus attention on small things.

Asking why the Opposition never asked how many Pakistani jets Indian armed forces downed, he said, “In an examination it is the result that matters. If a child scores good marks, we should not bother with whether he lost a pencil or broke a pen. What the Opposition should ask is if Operation Sindoor met its goals. The answer is yes."

Repeatedly hailing the armed forces and Indian defence systems for successfully thwarting attacks, Rajnath said Pakistan could not hit a single target in India.

Reiterating India’s new “lakshman rekha against Pakistan-sponsored terror", he said, “talks and terror will not go together." He also took the occasion to question the Congress-led UPA regime for delinking terror from talks with Pakistan, thus diluting India’s stand on the issue and noted how at the recent SCO defence ministers’ meeting, he refused to sign the joint statement for failing to address Indian concerns on Pak-sponsored terrorism.

“BRICS, in the presence of China, condemned the Pahalgam terror attack, a sign that today’s India thinks and acts differently," he said, questioning the erstwhile UPA’s decision not to take military action against Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai attack.

Contextualizing the issue, Rajnath said India could not talk to a country whose very basis was hate, religious fanaticism and terrorism.

“Pakistan is a nursery of global terrorism. Pakistan-sponsored terrorism is not random madness. It is state policy," the minister said recalling how India’s past attempts to seek peace with the neighbour (Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 1999 and PM Modi’s 2015 Lahore visits) met with betrayals in Kargil and later Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019).

The minister said India “had had enough" and warned Pakistan against misadventure, declaring, “those dreaming of bleeding India with a thousand cuts better wake up from sleep because India under Modi will go to any extent to root out terrorism".

He added that while India seeks peace, it knows how to teach lessons if provoked. Amid Opposition’s rampant queries about Operation Sindoor’s abrupt halting, the minister quoted Goswami Tulsidas to say — “Wars are waged with equals, lions killing frogs won’t send a good signal."

Nation