Dinesh Trivedi new High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh

India has appointed senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi as the new High Commissioner to Bangladesh. 

The Ministry of External Affairs announced the appointment on Monday, stating that the 75-year-old politician will soon take up his post in Dhaka. 

He replaces professional diplomat Prannoy Verma, who has been serving in the Indian mission in Dhaka since September 2022 and has now been appointed as India's Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union.

Trivedi’s appointment breaks the usual diplomatic tradition in India, where top posts like High Commissioner are generally given to senior officers from the Indian Foreign Service. 

According to party sources, Trivedi was chosen for his close ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his long political experience, and his clear understanding of the cultural relationship between Bengal and Bangladesh. 

Although he comes from a Gujarati business family, Trivedi speaks fluent Bengali. 

Trivedi has a long and varied political career that began in the 1980s with the Congress party. 

He later moved to the Janata Dal and became a Rajya Sabha member for the first time in 1990. 

He then joined West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, serving another term in the Rajya Sabha before contesting his first direct election in 2009. 

During the second term of the UPA government, he served as the Union Railway Minister and also held the position of Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare.

For many years, Trivedi acted as Banerjee's representative in national politics. 

However, their relationship began to deteriorate after 2016. In 2019, he lost the Lok Sabha election from the Barrackpore constituency to a BJP candidate, after which the Trinamool Congress sent him back to the Rajya Sabha. 

Ultimately, Trivedi left the Trinamool Congress in February 2021 and formally joined the BJP the following month.