'India was defeated on Day 1 of Operation Sindoor': Prithviraj Chavan stirs up row, BJP lashes out at Congress

Former Maharashtra chief minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan has stirred a controversy with his remarks claiming that India was defeated on the first day of Operation Sindoor and Indian aircrafts were shot down during the four-day conflict.

Chavan was addressing a press conference in Pune when he made the controversial remarks. Chavan went on to claim that the Indian Air Force was "completely grounded", amid the probability of being shot down by Pakistan.

"On the first day (of Operation Sindoor), we were completely defeated. In the half-hour aerial engagement that took place on the 7th, we were fully defeated, whether people accept it or not. Indian aircraft were shot down. The Air Force was completely grounded, and not a single aircraft flew. If any aircraft had taken off from Gwalior, Bathinda, or Sirsa, there was a high probability of being shot down by Pakistan, which is why the Air Force was fully grounded," the Congress leader said.

He even questioned the need to maintain army when future combats are going to take place in the air.

"Recently, we saw during Operation Sindoor, there was not even a one-kilometre movement of the military. Whatever happened over two or three days was only an aerial war and missile warfare. In the future, too, wars will be fought in the same way. In such a situation, do we really need to maintain an army of 12 lakh soldiers, or can we make they do some other work?" he said.

The ruling BJP has slammed the Congress leader for his remarks.

BJP's national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said that Congress hates Indian Armed Forces.

"Sena ka apman is Congress ki pehchaan (Insulting the Army is Congress' identity). From Sadak ka gunda to doubting Sindoor / Surgical Strike/ Balakote and even Op Mahadev," he wrote in a post on X.

Operation Sindoor was India's swift, targeted military response in May 2025 to a major terrorist attack in Pahalgam, aiming to destroy terrorist infrastructure and launchpads inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Under Operation Sindoor, the Indian armed forces carried out pre-dawn missile strikes on May 7 on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. The targets included the Jaish-e-Mohammad stronghold of Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Taiba's base in Muridke.

The operation was launched in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives.