Roving Periscope: Action matters, not losses, says CDS Anil Chauhan on Op Sindoor
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In cricket, if a team wins by an innings, the number of wickets, balls or players do not matter. Likewise, India’s action during the recent Operation Sindoor matters, not the losses it may have suffered, Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Tuesday.
Delivering a lecture at the Savitribai Phule University in Pune, he said, “When I was asked about losses on our side, I said these are not important.”
“The results and how you act are important. It would not be very correct to talk about losses,” he was quoted as saying in the media reports on Tuesday.
About the losses incurred by Pakistan, he said, “Based on technical parameters, we will take out this particular data and share it with you. We will tell you how many aircraft and radars we destroyed. We’ll make a rough assessment of that and come out with that shortly.”
Last week, he was quoted as saying that the Indian Air Force (IAF) learned from its initial tactical errors.
“The good part is that we were able to understand the tactical mistakes which we made; remedied, rectified and then implemented it again after two days. We flew all our jets again targeting at long range,” he said.
However, he categorically denied Pakistan’s claims of downing six Indian jets, terming them as “absolutely incorrect.”
India launched Operation Sindoor in the wee hours of May 7, targeting nine terrorist sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The counterterror strike was India’s response to the April 22 Pahalgam attack that claimed the lives of 26 people.
Speaking about the Pahalgam massacre, CDS Chauhan said the terror incident caused a huge “revulsion” and “hatred” In India.
“What happened in Pahalgam was profound cruelty towards the victims because all of them were killed with head shots in front of their families and their children and they were shot in the name of religion… which is kind of unacceptable to this modern world. This caused a huge revulsion in the society. There was a kind of hatred. It revived memories because this was not a single act of terror against India,” the CDS said.
India has been a victim of maximum terror acts over the last four decades, in which almost 20,000 people have been killed.
“The emotion which was being evoked in the people of India was of revenge, retribution, and to get the perpetrator to justice. At the end of it, there was probably some sort of satisfaction, and anxiety (during Operation Sindoor),” he added.
