Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar countered the Opposition’s charges during a special discussion on Operation Sindoor in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (July 30, 2025).

While Mr. Nadda said the approach towards terrorism and terrorists had changed since 2014, Mr. Jaishankar maintained that no telephone call had taken place between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Trump between April 22, when the Pahalgam terror attack took place, and June 16.

Mr. Jaishankar said there was no third-party intervention in bringing about a ceasefire with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. “We gave a message that we are now responding to Pakistani attack and we will keep responding. If that fighting has to stop, Pakistan must make a request and that request must come from the channel of Pakistan’s Director-General of Military Operations,” he said.

The External Affairs Minister said U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance had called Mr. Modi to warn him that as per an American assessment, a massive Pakistani attack would take place. “Prime Minister listened and made it very clear that if anything of that sort happens, it (Pakistan) would get a fitting and appropriate response from our side. A few hours later that happened and a fitting and appropriate response also happened, which disabled the entire Pakistani air defence system and rendered all their airfields inoperative,” he said.

“I want to make three things clear: there was no leader, nobody in the world that asked India to stop its operations. This is something the Prime Minister also said. There was no linkage of trade in any of these conversations and there was no talk between the Prime Minister and President Trump,” he said.

Mr. Nadda alleged that the anti-terrorism policy of the previous Congress-led governments at the Centre had suffered due to their eagerness to appease Pakistan. Questioning the Congress’s stand on counter-terrorism measures, Mr. Nadda asked the Opposition leaders to introspect about their responses to terror attacks when they were in power. “The Army was the same but there was no political will,” he said comparing the previous United Progressive Alliance and the current National Democratic Alliance governments.

He said the Union government acted swiftly after the Pahalgam attack. “The Home Minister of our sensitive government was in Kashmir at 5 p.m. on the day of the attack, while the Prime Minister cut short his Saudi Arabia visit,” he said, countering the Opposition’s charges that the political leadership did not act as responsibly as the military leadership.