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Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi at the book launch event in New Delhi on Thursday. (Express Photo)
Operation Sindoor was given to the Army a week after the Pahalgam terrorist attack, even as it was carried out another week later, on May 7, said Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi in New Delhi on Thursday.
“Operation Sindoor was given to me — if I remember — on April 29 or 30, but it was not put out in the media,” said General Dwivedi while speaking at the launch of a book on the military action.
“Whenever I stay to stand on the rostrum after April 22, 2025, (when Pahalgam terrorist attack happened), I am always slightly cautious and apprehensive because that day, I was taking the retiring officers’ seminar and was into 3/4th of my address and suddenly Rajiv Ghai (then DGMO) walked in and said, ‘Sir, chhota sa’.
When the DGMO says ‘chhota sa’, you can make out there must be something more,” recalled General Dwivedi.
That time, the Northern Army Commander was also attending the seminar, he looked at me, I looked at him, and he understood and immediately walked out. By that time, he had also gotten a slip about what had happened, and the rest is history, added the Chief of Army Staff.
Calling Operation Sindoor, which was conducted by India as a response to the Pahalgam terror attack as “one of the most consequential operations in recent history”, the Army Chief said, “A joint synergistic approach was the hallmark of Op Sindoor, because at 0147 hours, in the ops room, it was a setting which had Army, Air Force and Naval colleagues, along with diplomatic corps.”
Red Lines Redrawn: Operation Sindoor and India’s New Normal (Konark Publishers), authored by Maj Gen Bipin Bakshi, Air Mshl Rajesh Kumar, Amb Anil Trigunayat and Brig Akhelesh Bhargava, spotlights the planning rooms and operational environment of the 88-hour operation launched on Pakistan.
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“There were actions from both sides, but the winner in the long run was the one whose narrative was based on truth and packed with credible evidence. The world saw on their TV screens, how the nine targets were destroyed in a synergistic manner, that all three forces were involved in it through 22 minutes of precision non-escalatory strikes,” he said.
“The old assumption that India requires a long time for decision-making as also a long drawn mobilisation cycle to synchronise force application was quietly thrown out of the window, and one could say that the adversary discovered that India’s decision-making loop has become shorter,” he added, on the political will behind the operation.
However, speaking about the learnings from Op Sindoor, Dwivedi said that India has to be careful with its supply chains and build resilience through atma nirbharta, which is the only solution for the long run.
Divya A reports on travel, tourism, culture and social issues - not necessarily in that order - for The Indian Express. She's been a journalist for over a decade now, working with Khaleej Times and The Times of India, before settling down at Express. Besides writing/ editing news reports, she indulges her pen to write short stories. As Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellow for Excellence in Journalism, she is researching on the lives of the children of sex workers in India. ... Read More
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