A day after US President Donald Trump claimed that “five jets were shot down” during India’s Operation Sindoor, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi slammed PM Narendra Modi, saying the country had a right to know the truth.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Saturday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi after US President Donald Trump claimed that “five jets were shot down” during the India-Pakistan conflict in May. Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, said the country had a right to know the truth.
“Modi ji, what is the truth about the five jets? The country has the right to know!” Gandhi wrote on X, while posting a video of Trump who is heard making the claim.
Speaking at the White House during a dinner he hosted for Republican senators on Friday, Trump said, “You had India, Pakistan, that was going in fact, planes were being shot out of the air… four or five. But I think five jets were shot down. Actually, that was getting worse and worse, wasn’t it?”
However, Trump did not specify whether the jets were lost by either of the two countries or if he was referring to combined losses. The US President also reiterated his remarks that there would be no trade deal with India and Pakistan if the conflict continued.
“That was looking like it was going to go. These are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other. But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger. And we got it solved through trade,” he said.
Congress general secretary-in-charge (communications) Jairam Ramesh slammed PM Modi, saying that “the Trump missile gets fired” for the 24th time with the same two messages, two days before the Monsoon Session of Parliament begins.
“The Prime Minister, who has had years of friendship and huglomacy with President Trump going back to ‘Howdy Modi’ in September 2019 and ‘Namaste Trump’ in February 2020, has to now himself make a clear and categorical statement in Parliament on what President Trump has been claiming over the past 70 days,” Ramesh said.
The Congress has been demanding that PM Modi answer Trump’s India-Pakistan “ceasefire” claims in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha during the Monsoon Session set to begin from July 21.
Since May 10, when Trump announced that India and Pakistan had agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire after a long night of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim on several occasions that he helped settle the tensions between the two countries.
However, India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries on a request from Pakistan.
Pakistan has claimed it downed three Rafales during the four-day military conflict with India. However, it did not provide any evidence to substantiate its claims.
While India’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, admitted that an unspecified number of its fighter jets were downed during the hostilities with Pakistan, he dismissed Pakistan’s claims of shooting down Rafales, saying they were “absolutely incorrect”. He also said that the losses were not important, but what mattered was the outcome of the operation.
Even Eric Trappier, the CEO of Dassault Aviation, the French company that makes Rafale jets, called Pakistan’s claims “inaccurate”.
In a nearly 35-minute phone call with Trump last month, PM Modi firmly said that India does not and will “never accept” mediation and that the discussions between Indian and Pakistani militaries on cessation of military actions were initiated at Islamabad’s request.
