Can Army Chief's Op Sindoor remarks undo Opposition's 'tied hands' charge?

New Delhi: For the first time in his career, India’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Upendra Dwivedi says he witnessed political clarity so sharp that it cut through the fog of war and gave the armed forces an unambiguous free hand.

Speaking at IIT Madras on August 4, Gen. Dwivedi recalled how the nation reeled from the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 civilians. “On the 23rd, the next day itself, we all sat down. This is the first time that RM (Defence Minister Rajnath Singh) said, ‘Enough is enough’.

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All three chiefs were very clear that something had to be done. The free hand was given saying ‘you decide what is to be done’. That is the kind of confidence, political direction and political clarity we saw for the first time,” he said.

According to the Army Chief, this was not just talk. “That is what raises your morale. That is how it helped our army commander-in-chiefs to be on the ground and act as per their wisdom,” he noted.

Dwivedi recounted how, on April 25, the top brass visited the Northern Command. “We thought, planned, conceptualised and executed the seven targets out of the nine that were destroyed, and a lot of terrorists were killed,” he said. On April 29, the chiefs met Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time since the Pahalgam attack.

“It is important how a small name, Op Sindoor, connects the whole nation. That is something which galvanised the whole nation. That is the reason the whole nation was saying why have you stopped? That question was being asked and it has been amply answered,” the Army Chief asserted.

Attempt to correct ‘tied hands’ narrative

Gen. Dwivedi’s account is seen as an attempt to counter the Opposition’s claim that the armed forces were not given a free hand.

The Opposition had cited an earlier statement by Captain Shiv Kumar, India’s Defence Attaché in Indonesia, to attack the Modi government for allegedly holding back the armed forces during Operation Sindoor.

Speaking at a seminar in June, Capt. Kumar had said that on Day 1 of Operation Sindoor, the armed forces were not allowed to target Pakistani military installations. According to him, these restrictions exposed Indian aircraft to enemy air defences, leading to losses on May 7. Only after those losses, he claimed, was the strategy changed to neutralise Pakistani air defence and other military assets.

Although those remarks described a strategic choice that can change rapidly in wartime, they became political ammunition for the Opposition.

Rahul Gandhi and other leaders accused the government of “tying the hands of our pilots” in Sindoor’s opening hours, forcing them into harm’s way without the ability to hit back at the enemy’s key defences.

By contrast, the Army Chief’s timeline begins on April 23, the very day after Pahalgam, when he says the Defence Minister gave all three service chiefs full freedom to act. His description of an immediate and unprecedented free hand directly contradicts the narrative that the government only loosened rules after suffering setbacks in May.