Rahul Gandhi on Saturday picked on external affairs minister S. Jaishankar's remark that India had informed Pakistan at the start of Operation Sindoor that it would not be targeting any military sites and billed it a "crime", wondering how many aircraft India lost as a result of this.

In a post on X, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said: "Informing Pakistan at the start of our attack was a crime. EAM has publicly admitted that GoI did it. Who authorised it? How many aircraft did our air force lose as a result?"

Rahul attached a bite given by Jaishankar on Thursday to the media, where the minister said: "At the start of the operation, we had sent a message to Pakistan saying we are striking at terrorist infrastructure. We are not striking at the military. So, the military has an option of standing out and not interfering in this process. They chose not to take that good advice."

Late in the evening, the external affairs ministry responded to media requests for a reaction to Rahul’s post without citing it. "EAM had stated that we had warned Pakistan 'at the start', which is clearly the early phase after Op Sindoor’s commencement. This is being falsely represented as being before the commencement. This utter misrepresentation of facts is being called out."

The Press Information Bureau’s fact-check unit had on Thursday itself sought to clear the air on Jaishankar’s comment, but it failed to die down in the past 48 hours.

AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh likened Jaishankar’s remark to that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "clean chit" to China in 2020 when he had said that no one had entered the country nor occupied any land in the wake of the Galwan clash. The Congress has since maintained that the remark weakened India's case at the negotiating table with China.

While the Congress had given a carte blanche to the Modi government to respond to the Pahalgam attack in whichever way it deemed fit, the party has been questioning the announcement of a "ceasefire" by US President Donald Trump on May 10, particularly since the government has time and again maintained that there is no change in the longstanding national policy that all issues between India and Pakistan are "strictly bilateral".