Former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan questions need for large Indian military

Pune: Former minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday questioned the need for "a large Indian Army", claiming that "chances of man-to-man combat in future war scenarios are less".

Chavan told reporters here that the "excess (personnel) in the Army could be used for purposes other than fighting wars" . He said during Operation Sindoor, India and Pakistan fought aerially and "the Indian Army did not have to move at all".

"India has military superiority over Pakistan because of its huge size — 12-15 lakh soldiers as against Pakistan's 5-7 lakh. But considering both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, no country in the world will allow a full-fledged war between them. It does not really matter now if we have 12 lakh or 25 lakh or one crore soldiers. Such superiority of a large army has ended, as there will be no man-to-man war in future. Our economy is 10 times bigger than Pakistan's," the former Maharashtra CM said.


"Accept it or not, we completely lost the battle on the first day of Operation Sindoor after our aircraft were shot down. The entire Air Force was grounded that day as there was a danger of aircraft being shot down if any had taken off from any air base like Gwalior, Bathinda or Sirsa," Chavan said.

The veteran Congress politician admitted that the party has fallen short of raising issues directly connected with the common people. He said the Congress's initiatives, such as Samvidhan Yatra and Tiranga Yatra, did not have the appeal to attract common people, especially the youth. "Our party organised Samvidhan Yatra and Tiranga Yatra, but only Congress members participated in it. There was no involvement of common people in these rallies."

Chavan emphasised that Congress should take up issues concerning youths, farmers, and other sections of society. "I personally feel that we fell short of raising issues of unemployment, farmers' crisis, and inflation, which are directly connected with youths and farmers," he said.

"There has been lopsided development happening under the present govt. This govt is interested only in big-ticket projects like constructing highways. We need to bring up issues of common people, which govt has been ignoring," he added.

Chavan also said the loss in the recent Bihar assembly elections came as a shock to Congresss and that an internal assessment was on. He expressed disappointment over the party's "failure" to address the conflict between Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and deputy CM DK Shivakumar.

Chavan criticised the Maharashtra govt for not giving Congress the post of leader of the opposition. "There has been a tradition to offer the leader of the opposition post to the opposition irrespective of the number of seats. However, this govt is not ready to give the post to the opposition and the chief minister is responsible for it," he added.