URI, May 20 : Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary on Wednesday said that while “Operation Sindoor” was avoidable, it inadvertently served as a brutal reminder of conflict’s reality — something residents of Srinagar and Jammu had, until recently, only watched from a distance.
“Operation Sindoor should not have happened. But one thing that did happen was that it proved very good for the people of the border,” the Deputy CM as per news agency Kashmir News Service (KNS) told a large public gathering in Uri, a town that has long lived in the shadow of India-Pakistan hostilities.
According to Deputy CM, recent drone intrusions were the trigger that brought the point home. “Why did it happen? Because this time the drone reached the city of Srinagar and the city of Jammu. And the people in both cities — who used to sit back and say war is nothing — this time, they too thought about what war truly is,” he said.
The Deputy Chief Minister also invoked the stoic spirit of border communities. “All the elders here have said — these bullets will be fired in the middle of our border cities. They cannot be afraid of these bullets, because my elders have never bowed down.”
He added that the drone episode fundamentally altered perceptions. “Today, when the winds of the drones swept through, people came to know what a drone is, what war is, what destruction means. And this war has stopped.” (KNS)
