Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday questioned External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for his remarks that India had informed Pakistan that it had targeted terrorist infrastructure on its soil after the April 22 Pahalgam attack.

Gandhi said it was a crime to inform Pakistan at the start of India’s attack, and claimed that Jaishankar had admitted that the Centre did so. The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha asked who authorised the move to inform Pakistan about India’s operation, and sought to know how many aircraft the Indian Air Force lost as a result.

The Ministry of External Affairs, however, said that Gandhi’s statement was a “misrepresentation of facts”, The Indian Express reported.

Jaishankar, addressing reporters on Thursday, had said that India, at the start of the military operation earlier this month, had sent a message to Pakistan that it was targeting terrorist infrastructure, and not the Pakistani military.

“So the [Pakistani] military has an option of standing out and not interfering in this process,” Jaishankar said. “They chose not to take that good advice.”

The foreign minister was referring to a call made by India’s Director General of Military Operations Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai to his Pakistani counterpart Major General Kashif Abdullah after the Indian military struck nine places in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir that it claimed were terrorist camps.

The Indian military operation had been codenamed Operation Sindoor.

Ghai had told Abdullah that India had targeted “carefully chosen” terrorist sites, and had not targeted military installations, according to The Indian Express. A message was conveyed to Islamabad that if it wanted to talk, New Delhi was prepared to engage.

The Ministry of External Affairs said that Gandhi’s statement that the government informed Pakistan at the start of the attack, due to which India may have lost aircraft, was an utter misrepresentation of facts.

“External Affairs Minister had stated that we had warned Pakistan at the start, which is clearly the early phase after Op Sindoor’s commencement,” the foreign ministry said. “This is being falsely represented as being before the commencement.”

On May 11, responding to a question from a journalist about Pakistan’s claim of having shot down Indian aircraft, Air Marshal AK Bharti said: “We are in a combat scenario. Losses are a part of combat.”

The Indian military strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and seven defence personnel were killed.

Pakistan has claimed that 40 of its civilians and 11 military personnel were killed.

Also read:

Interview: ‘Op Sindoor won’t stop terror; conflict with India existential for Pak Army’

This article first appeared on Scroll.in

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