New Delhi: India deliberately delayed responding to Pakistan’s request for a ceasefire during Operation Sindoor as its armed forces had “not even executed half” of their planned strikes, former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan revealed.
Pakistan contacted India through the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) hotline on the morning of May 10, 2025, seeking a ceasefire. New Delhi deliberately kept Islamabad waiting till afternoon because “half of our planned strikes had still not happened”, the former CDS said while speaking at ThePrint’s Off The Cuff event, as reported by News18.
“The biggest surprise to me was on 10 May, when Pakistan picked up the phone and said they wanted to talk. This was because on 9 May, the kind of rhetoric emerging from their side was that they would sort India out in 48 hours. Within about eight hours, they picked up the phone. We had not even executed half of our plans,” Gen Chauhan said.
India was determined to achieve its military objectives before considering a ceasefire, with additional waves of strikes already planned to demonstrate that no military installation inside Pakistan was beyond the reach of the Indian Armed Forces, the former CDS said.
Pakistan’s decision to seek a ceasefire stemmed from a belief that its strikes on Indian targets had achieved their intended effect, he said. At the same time, Islamabad had witnessed the damage caused by Indian Air Force strikes carried out on the night of May 9 and the early hours of May 10, prompting it to seek an end to the conflict before India escalated further.
Indian operations were still in progress when Pakistan initiated contact through the DGMO hotline, the retired general said.
“I think that was the biggest surprise. The second thing, which probably wasn’t a surprise but reflected our capability, was that we had better battlefield transparency than the adversary,” he said.
Gen Chauhan said that Indian commanders had a clearer and faster assessment of the battlefield than their Pakistani counterparts, allowing quicker military decision-making.
“We knew what our attacks had achieved, what Pakistan’s attacks had achieved, and because we were all looking at the same picture, we could make decisions faster. War is about taking decisions faster so that the enemy is always on the receiving side. We were able to do that,” he added.
As part of Operation Sindoor, India struck terror facilities in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7, 2025. This was in retaliation to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam that left 26 innocents dead.
India informed Pakistan that it had struck only terror camps and not military or civilian infrastructure, but Islamabad reacted by launching missiles and drones at targets in India. Most of these were intercepted and India struck back on the intervening night of May 9/10, causing severe damage to Pakistani air bases and air defence systems.
Pakistan was on the phone in the morning of May 10, seeking a ceasefire.