Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday raised sharp questions at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding an explanation about the US President Donald Trump's "five jets shot down" claims made in his speech. In a post on X, Gandhi said, "Modi ji, what is the truth about the 5 ships? The country has the right to know!" This comes after Donald Trump once again claimed to have halted the escalation of the India-Pakistan conflict on Saturday.
Joining the attack, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram questioned the government's silence and credibility. "After President Trump's latest statement, what does the government of India have to say? Silence is no answer," he wrote in a post on X. He further added, "I would like to believe the government of India, but if the government does not state the truth -- actually does not say anything at all on the outcomes of the 5-day war -- what do we believe?"
Earlier in the day, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "friendship and hugomacy" with US President while demanding clarification regarding the "five jets shot down" claims made by the latter in his latest speech.
"The sensational new revelation by President Trump this time around is that five jets may have been downed. The Prime Minister, who has had years of friendship and huglomacy with President Trump going back to Howdy Modi in Sept 2019 and Namaste Trump in Feb 2020, has to now himself make a clear and categorical statement in Parliament on what President Trump has been claiming over the past 70 days," the Congress Rajya Sabha MP posted on X. Ramesh said that the US President remains fixated on his intervention to stop the war between the two nuclear nations and emphasised the threat of "no trade deal" if the war continued.
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Earlier on Saturday, Trump once again claimed to have halted the escalation of the India-Pakistan conflict. "We stopped a lot of wars. And these were serious, India and Pakistan, that were going on. Planes were being shot out of there. I think five jets were shot down, actually. These are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other. You know, it seems like a new form of warfare. You saw it recently when you looked at what we did in Iran, where we knocked out their nuclear capability, totally knocked out that," he said. India has repeatedly said that the cessation of hostilities with Pakistan following the success of Operation Sindoor did not come about due to any mediation, and it happened after Pakistan's DGMO called his Indian counterpart.