New Delhi, June 27 (IANS) The Centre has summarily rejected the Opposition’s ‘narrative building exercise’ over Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s old statement on Operation Sindoor in the Parliament, related to loss of lives in the military exercise, and termed its assertions as “deliberately misleading and factually incorrect.”

The Defence Ministry, taking note of certain social media posts, said that this is a deliberate attempt to “misrepresent” Raksha Mantri’s address delivered on the floor of Parliament on July 28, 2025, by selectively quoting isolated portions of his speech.

The controversy over Rajnath Singh’s statement over ‘no soldiers’ death in the Parliament, days after Operation Sindoor, started after six fallen jawans were immortalised by inscribing their names on the National War Memorial in the capital yesterday. This marked the first public revelation of the names of the armed forces jawans who laid their lives in Operation Sindoor.

This gave the Congress an opportunity to train guns at the Centre and the Defence Minister, as it claimed that the latter tried to gloss over the sacrifice of soldiers during Operation Sindoor, thus not giving them the respect and honour that they deserved.

Congress leader Pawan Khera dug out the old parliamentary address of Rajnath Singh and said that there could be only two possibilities – either the Defence Minister was unaware of the martyrdom of six soldiers while addressing the House, or the other could be that he knew the truth and yet chose to mislead.

He said that both situations raise questions about his competence and added, “This is an insult to our soldiers, and no true patriot can remain silent or complacent about it.”

Another Congress leader, Manish Tewari, targeted the Defence Minister, asking, “Was he oblivious of the facts when he addressed Parliament?”

He said that the Defence Minister, during a debate on Operation Sindoor, said that no harm was caused to any Indian soldier during Operation Sindoor, but then, after 13 months, released the names of six soldiers martyred in the operation.

The Centre, replying to these charges, said that these posts selectively quote a truncated portion of the Defence Minister’s speech to falsely imply that he claimed that no Indian soldier lost his life during Operation Sindoor.

Dismissing the narrative as ‘mischievous’, it said that when the Raksha Mantri made the statement in Parliament, there were multiple claims of India losing its pilots in the operation, and therefore, his remarks should be seen in that context and not otherwise.

“The Union Minister’s remarks were a targeted and contextually specific response to a falsehood that was gaining dangerous traction at that moment,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

It also said the narrative was entirely false, yet it was aggressively amplified with the intent to diminish the operation’s success and demoralise public sentiment.

It further said that Rajnath Singh’s statement in the Parliament was, in its entirety, a proud and accurate account of the remarkable success of Operation Sindoor, an operation that saw Defence Forces demonstrating unmatched precision, resolve, and military professionalism by hitting multiple targets deep inside Pakistan.

–IANS

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