When did India inform Pak about Op Sindoor? CDS Chauhan clears air amid Rahul Gandhi's attack on Jaishankar

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan on Tuesday hailed the Indian Armed Forces

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan on Tuesday said India had informed Pakistan on May 7 that it had launched Operation Sindoor, hitting nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The strikes were in retaliation to last week's Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 people were killed.

"...We had informed Pakistan on the day we launched the surgical strikes on the 7th of May... We did the strike between 1 and 1.05 am. After that we called Pakistan to say we have done this. When there was rhetoric from the Pakistani side, we also said that in case Pakistan hits us, hits the military establishments, we are going to hit them back, hit them harder..." said Chauhan while delivering a special lecture on 'Future Wars and Warfare' organised by Savitribai Phule Pune University.

His comments come following Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's allegation that India had informed Pakistan about targeting the terrorist infrastructure on its soil. Gandhi had accused External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar of publicly admitting that the Centre had informed Pakistan of the action. "Informing Pakistan at the start of our attack was a crime. EAM has publicly admitted that the GOI did it. Who authorised it? How many aircraft did our air force lose as a result?" the Rae Bareli MP said in a post on X on Saturday.

However, Jaishankar had called the Congress party's accusations of him ‘informing’ Pakistan about India's “Operation Sindoor” as “dishonest” and “a misrepresentation of events".

On being asked about the losses incurred by Pakistan side during Operation Sindoor, Chauhan 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...Suppose you go in a cricket test match, and you win by an innings defeat, then there's no question of how many wickets, how many balls and how many players... Based on technical parameters, we will take out this particular data and share it with you. We will tell you how many aircraft we destroyed and how many radars did we destroy. We'll make a rough assessment of that and come out with that shortly."

Chauhan also said that “state-sponsored terror must stop". His remarks directly referenced recent comments by Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir regarding Kashmir.

Chauhan stated that the country “won’t live under the shadow of terror and nuclear blackmail." Reinforcing India’s stance, he said,  “Pakistan should not be able to hold India hostage to terrorist activities".

He said water and blood can’t flow togethe. "We have drawn military lines against terrorism," he said while emphasising a hardening stance against cross-border terror.

General Chauhan also shared that Pakistan telephoned India first. Acknowledging the complexities of military action, he said, “We can’t be 100% correct when conducting military operations," while assuring that “there was no collateral damage… we did not hit the civilians."