Ex-union minister Dinesh Trivedi to be India's next ambassador to Bangladesh as nations reset ties

As a first political appointee in the neighbourhood, Trivedi will replace career diplomat Pranay Verma, who moves to Brussels as the Indian envoy to the EU.

Updated on: Apr 19, 2026, 14:50:12 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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In a significant development, the Narendra Modi government has decided to send former Union Minister and Barrackpore MP, now a BJP leader, Dinesh Trivedi, as India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh. As a first political appointee in the neighbourhood after a long time, Trivedi will replace career diplomat Pranay Verma, who moves to Brussels as the Indian ambassador to the EU.

Trivedi was a Union Minister for Railways and Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare during the UPA regime, as a member of the Trinamool Congress. (Sourced/HT Photo)

While agreement will be sought from the Tarique Rahman government in Dhaka for Trivedi, the decision to send a 75-year-old veteran politician as India’s envoy to Bangladesh is also a message of accountability to the Ministry of External Affairs' diplomats.

Trivedi was a Union Minister for Railways and Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare during the UPA regime, as a member of the Trinamool Congress. He resigned from the TMC on February 12, 2021 and joined the BJP on March 6, 2021.

The appointment of Trivedi comes at a time when India and Bangladesh are trying to repair their relationship after the Mohammed Yunus disaster, post-removal of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a coup, with both military and police refusing to open fire on the agitators. During the tenure of US-backed Yunus, the India-Bangladesh ties deteriorated, with the chief advisor unable to contain sectarian violence against the minority community in Bangladesh.

However, the appointment of Dinesh Trivedi is a clear signal from the Modi government that it is not averse to sending political leaders as India’s envoys to key countries, and these much sought-after postings are not merely a preserve of Indian Foreign Service officers.

While former Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag served as Indian High Commissioner to Seychelles from 2019-2022, the posting of Trivedi to Dhaka also indicates that India will be sending heavyweights to the neighbourhood as envoys, and the era of an ambassador for good times is over, at least in the Indian subcontinent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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