New Delhi: Concerns over possible casualties incurred by the Indian Armed Forces during Operation Sindoor have been voiced by the Congress party.

Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh asked on Saturday whether the center will move to establish a review committee in light of the evidence provided by General Anil Chauhan, citing an interview with a news agency.
He remembered the work done by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee administration in 1999, three days after the conflict ended, when it established a Kargil review committee headed by Indian journalist and international strategic affairs expert K. Subrahmanyam.

The Vajpayee government established the Kargil Review Committee on July 29, 1999, with K. Subrahmanyam, India’s strategic affairs expert, serving as its chairman. His son is now our External Affairs Minister. Only three days had passed since the conclusion of the Kargil War. Five months later, this Committee turned in its comprehensive report. The ‘From Surprise to Reckoning’ report was then placed on the table of both houses of parliament on February 23, 2000, with the required redactions. Given what the Chief of Defence Staff recently disclosed in Singapore, would the Modi administration now follow suit? “I said,” Ramesh said.

In the meanwhile, the CDS acknowledged to Reuters on the fringes of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that the Armed Forces had been hit during the early phases of the operation but had later attacked Pakistani sites without repercussions.

“All I can say is that there were losses on May 7 and in the early going, but the figures are unimportant. What mattered were the reasons behind these defeats and our next course of action. Thus, we changed our strategy and returned in force on the seventh, eighth, and tenth to target enemy strongholds in Pakistan’s interior, breaching all of their defenses with impunity and launching sporadic opposing strikes,” Reuters cited Gen. Chauhan as saying.

The Pakistani side attempted to attack Indian defense and civilian infrastructure in retaliation for India’s assault on Pakistani terrorist bases. Several Pakistani air bases were destroyed in a subsequent round of precise assaults by India. On May 10, the two sides then came to an agreement over the end of hostilities.