Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Oct 1: Senior Congress leader and former home minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday rejected claims that he had told interviewers the United States prevented India from mounting a military response after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Posting on X, Chidambaram said he never made the remark in his conversation on Megha Prasad’s podcast. “In no part of the interview … did I say that ‘US stopped us from retaliating after the 26/11 attack,’” he wrote, adding that television channels, online outlets and users on social media were wrongly attributing those words to him. He lamented the distortions, calling them “the perils of talking to the media.”

The issue quickly escalated into a political flashpoint, with the ruling BJP and its allies seizing on the episode to fault the UPA-era government for its response to the attacks, and a flood of critical posts circulating on social platforms.

In the same interview, Chidambaram recounted the immediate aftermath of 26/11: he said he became Home Minister the day after the attacks after being moved from Finance, and that he briefly considered a retaliatory strike. He described discussing the idea with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other senior officials, and said the final decision leaned on advice from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Foreign Service to pursue diplomatic channels rather than physical retaliation.