New Delhi, 27 April (H.S.): Former Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dinesh Trivedi has been appointed as India’s next High Commissioner to Bangladesh, the Ministry of External Affairs announced on Monday. The Ministry said he will assume his duties shortly.

Trivedi will succeed Pranay Verma, who has recently been named India’s Ambassador to Belgium and concurrently Representative of India to the European Union. His appointment is notable because the High Commission in Dhaka is usually led by an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, but this time a senior political figure has been chosen for the role.

Dinesh Trivedi has had a long and varied political journey. He played a key role in the formation of Jan Morcha in 1978 (though the event is often mis‑dated as 1987 in many Hindi‑language reports), which later merged with Janata Dal. He served as a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat from 1990 to 1996 and was instrumental in the founding of Trinamool Congress in 1998.

Under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Manmohan Singh, Trivedi served as Railway Minister. However, he had to resign in 2012 after facing strong opposition over his proposal to raise rail fares in the railway budget. He left the Trinamool Congress and joined the BJP in 2021.

Although Trivedi is from Gujarat, he is known to have strong command over the Bengali language, which is expected to help in building rapport in Bangladesh. Bilateral ties between India and Bangladesh had cooled after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina–led government, but are now seen as gradually returning to track following the rise of a new administration led by Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

In this context, the choice of Trivedi—a veteran politician with deep regional‑language skills and experience in high‑level government—signals India’s intent to maintain continuity and warmth in its relationship with Dhaka during a period of political transition.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar