Just days ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh launched a sharp political attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding a clear statement over U.S. President Donald Trump’s explosive claim that five jets were shot down during the recent India-Pakistan tensions.

Referring to the Prime Minister’s previous engagements with Trump — including the ‘Howdy Modi’ event in September 2019 and ‘Namaste Trump’ in February 2020 — Ramesh took a dig at what he termed Modi’s years of “friendship and huglomacy” with Trump.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Ramesh wrote, “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… has to now himself make a clear and categorical statement in Parliament on what President Trump has been claiming over the past 70 days.”

Trump’s remarks, made again this week during a public event, suggest that his administration intervened to prevent a full-scale conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours. According to him, five fighter jets were shot down during the confrontation that followed India’s Operation Sindoor, launched in retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack.

Reinforcing Trump’s narrative, Jairam Ramesh noted that this was the 24th time in 70 days the former U.S. President has raised the same talking points.

“Just two days before the Monsoon Session begins, the Trump missile gets fired for the 24th time with the same two messages:

The US stopped the war between India and Pakistan.

No trade deal if the war continued,” Ramesh stated.

Trump, while speaking at multiple events recently, said, “We stopped a lot of wars. India and Pakistan were going at it. Planes were being shot out of the air — I think five jets were shot down. These are two serious nuclear countries. It was getting worse, and we got it solved through trade.”

In a separate meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump doubled down, claiming, “It would have been a nuclear war within another week, the way that was going. It was going very badly.”

Despite repeated assertions from Trump, India has consistently denied any foreign mediation in its military matters, stressing that de-escalation happened solely through direct military dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad.

As the Monsoon Session nears, opposition parties are now expected to press the government for an official statement from the Prime Minister on the matter — putting the spotlight once again on India’s foreign policy handling and the credibility of international claims being made around its security situation.