Three operations, one unmistakable message: India hits back. The Chief Minister's Office of Rajasthan invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's national security record on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, citing the Surgical Strike, the Balakot Air Strike, and Operation Sindoor as proof of the country's unflinching commitment to fighting cross-border terrorism.

The post, shared from the official @RajCMO account and tagging Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, reads: 'Pradhan Mantri Shri Narendra Modi ji ke netritva mein Surgical Strike, Balakot Air Strike aur Operation Sindoor ne aatankwaad ke viruddh Bharat ki dridh pratibaddhtaa ko pradarshit kiya hai' — 'Under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the Surgical Strike, the Balakot Air Strike, and Operation Sindoor have demonstrated India's firm commitment against terrorism.'

From Uri to Pulwama: the chain of retaliatory force

The two verified operations anchor a well-documented policy shift. In September 2016, following the deadly Uri attack on an Indian Army base in Jammu and Kashmir, Indian Army special forces crossed the Line of Control and struck militant launchpads in what became known as the Surgical Strike — the first time India officially acknowledged and publicised such a cross-border ground operation.

Then came February 2019. Days after a suicide bomber killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel near Pulwama, Indian Air Force jets struck a facility in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — deep inside Pakistani territory — targeting a Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp. The airstrike marked a dramatic escalation in India's counter-terrorism calculus, erasing the long-standing convention that conventional strikes would stop at the Line of Control.

BJP's national security narrative anchored at the state level

Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, a BJP leader who has helmed Rajasthan since the party's return to power, has consistently aligned the state government's messaging with the central leadership's governance themes. Invoking these operations from a state-level platform is a deliberate amplification strategy — taking a national security achievement and embedding it in the party's identity across every tier of government.

Rajasthan shares a long international border with Pakistan, making counter-terrorism and national security resonant issues for the state's electorate. The aapno agrani Rajasthan ('our leading Rajasthan') hashtag appended to the post frames the state as a stakeholder in, and champion of, India's security posture — not merely a passive observer of Delhi's decisions.

The doctrine behind the strikes

The three operations cited represent a clear doctrinal arc. Where previous Indian governments responded to terror attacks with diplomatic pressure and international appeals, the Modi era institutionalised the language of calibrated military response. Each action was paired with a communication strategy: official acknowledgement, photographic evidence, and political framing that turned operational secrecy into public messaging capital.

That doctrine — punish the sponsor, publicise the punishment — now forms the backbone of the BJP's national security brand, and posts like this one from the Rajasthan CMO are part of how that brand is maintained between election cycles. The kicker is simple: India's counter-terrorism posture has moved from reactive silence to declared, repeated, public resolve.