Indian army chief admits miscalculation in Operation Sindoor

Monitoring Desk

NEW DELHI:  Indian Army Chief General UpendraDwivedi has admitted that India launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan without fully assessing the consequences, acknowledging that the country was unprepared for the scale of Pakistan’s retaliation.

Speaking about the early May operation, Dwivedi likened the move to a “game of chess” in which India did not anticipate Pakistan’s destructive counterattack.

“We did not know what to do, and we did not realize how destructive Pakistan’s response could be,” Dwivedi confessed.

Operation Sindoor saw Indian fighter jets carry out air strikes in several Pakistani cities, including Bahawalpur. However, Pakistan responded within hours, downing six Indian warplanes — including advanced Rafale jets — and targeting strategic military sites in India.

In his address at a function at IIT-Madras, he recalled the intricacies of India’s decisive military action

in May in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack.

Using the metaphor of the chess game, Gen Dwivedi said, “In Operation Sindoor what we did, we played chess. So, what does it mean? It means, we did not know what is the next move, the enemy is going to take, and what we are going to do. This is something, we call..the grey zone. Grey zone is that

we are not going for the conventional operations. But, we are doing something, just short of a conventional operation.”

“Conventional operation means, go with everything, take everything you have. And, if you are able to come back, otherwise, stay there. That is called the conventional approach. Here, the grey zone means any activity that is taking place in all domains, that is something we are talking about and Operation

Sindoor taught us that this is the grey zone,” he said.