NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday slammed senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan for his remarks on the Indian Air Force and Operation Sindoor, saying that the Congress party “hates Indian armed forces”.

Mr Chavan, who spoke in Marathi, was addressing a meeting of his party workers in Pune where he also questioned the need to maintain large military forces, saying that wars would be fought in the air, reports said.

On Operation Sindoor he was quoted as saying: “On the very first day, we faced a complete defeat. On the 7th (May), during an aerial battle that lasted only half an hour, we were completely defeated, whether one accepts it or not. On that day, Indian aircraft were shot down, and the entire Indian Air Force was grounded. After that, not a single aircraft flew, because wherever a plane took off, whether from Gwalior, Bathinda, or Sirsa, there was a high risk of it being shot down by Pakistan. For this reason, our entire Air Force was grounded…”

BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla slammed Mr Chavan’s “shocking controversial statements” and said, “Congress hates Indian Armed Forces. Sena ka apman is Congress ki pehchan (Insulting the army is Congress’s identity),” he posted on X.

Mr Chavan is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering. He spent time working in the field of aircraft instrumentation and designing audio recorders for anti-submarine warfare in the US before returning to India and becoming an entrepreneur in 1974.

He was drawn into politics after meeting with Rajiv Gandhi. He has been involved in the Indian National Congress bureaucracy for most of his adult life, notably as a member of the Rajya Sabha and later architect of the civil nuclear liability bill.

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2025