NEW DELHI, Apr 27: The former union minister Dinesh Trivedi, also a former long-time associate of the West Bengal ruling party the Trinamool Congress, and now in the BJP, has been appointed as India’s next High Commissioner to Bangladesh.
New Delhi’s decision to send a veteran politician to Dhaka comes at a time when both the sides are looking at repairing the bilateral ties that came under severe strain during the tenure of Bangladesh’s interim government headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Mr Trivedi is expected to take up the assignment shortly, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a brief statement on Monday. He will succeed Pranay Verma, who has been appointed as New Delhi’s next Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union (EU).
The relations between India and Bangladesh witnessed major downturn after Yunus-led interim government came to power following the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina government in August, 2024. Mr Verma played a role in initiating the efforts to reset the ties after the new Bangladesh Nationalist Party government led by the Prime Minister Tarique Rahman came to power in February.
Earlier this month, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman visited India and held talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. The focus of the meetings was to bolster the bilateral ties including in areas of trade, energy and people-to-people exchanges.
The two sides initiated efforts to stabilise the relations after Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, accompanied by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, represented India at the inauguration of Tarique Rahman as the Prime Minister in Dhaka on February 17. Mr Rahman became the Prime Minister following his party’s landslide victory in the parliamentary polls.
For decades, New Delhi treated Dhaka as a merit posting. Bangladesh was where India sent some of its brightest career diplomats, many of whom later became Foreign Secretary, ambassadors to major capitals, or senior security officers. Dhaka was, in all good sense, not a hardship station or ceremonial exile for Indian officials. It was a proving ground—at least that has been the reading among Bangladesh’s policy circle elites.
Mr Trivedi, who originally hails from Gujarat but had moved to West Bengal during his political career, has a background of more than three decades of frontline politics across India’s major parties. He joined the BJP in 2021 after a long spell in the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) where he was once a close confidant of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee before a public split. Earlier, he also served in the Janata Dal and the Congress.
He has served in both Houses of Parliament—as Lok Sabha MP from Barrackpore from 2009 to 2019 and in multiple terms in the Rajya Sabha. As Railway Minister in 2011-12, he proposed fare hikes to finance safety and modernisation—an economically sound but politically costly move that led to a rupture with Mamata Banerjee and his resignation.
(Manas Dasgupta)
