Dinesh Trivedi

Early life Trivedi was born in a Gujarati family. He is the youngest child of his parents, Hiralal Trivedi and Urmilaben Trivedi, who migrated to India from Karachi during India's partition, where all his other siblings were born. He also applied to train as an actor at the Film Institute, Pune, but did not follow it up as he then believed it not to be a serious job, as reported by Rediff.com.

Early career After his MBA in 1974, he worked in Chicago for two years for the Detex Company, before returning to India, where he worked for a logistics provider Lee and Muirhead. Later, in 1998 he joined Mamata Banerjee when she started the Trinamool Congress party and became its first general secretary. In the 2009 elections he contested for the Trinamool Congress party and won from Barrackpore to join the lower house in the Parliament. In 2011, after Mamata Banerjee quit as the railway minister to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal, he was elevated as the Cabinet Minister for Railways. and would like to restructure the Indian Railway Board, which lacked synergy before he joined. Trivedi is pushing for a national policy on railways, that would continue irrespective of political changes in the government. or French support.

In 2011, the script of the James Bond film Skyfall, part of which was shot on trains in India, had to be changed when Trivedi insisted that people not be shown travelling on the roofs of trains, which is illegal.

In August 2011, Mamata Banerjee's ministerial room in the Parliament, which has traditionally been allotted to the railway minister, was allotted to another minister as she was his senior colleague in the cabinet. However, before the formal orders could be issued, Trivedi involved the Prime Minister and Mamata Banerjee to get the room allotted to himself to avoid "utter humiliation of the Railway Ministry and 14 lakh Railway employees". According to The Tribune, his party also reminded the Prime Minister that the UPA owed this to its biggest ally, the AITC.

Railway budget controversy On 14 March 2012, Trivedi announced the annual rail budget 2012 that included an all over hike in passenger fares, ranging from 2 paise to 30 paise per kilometre for reasons of safety along with network expansion and modernisation. The fare hike was opposed by his own party's leader, Mamata Banerjee. Senior TMC MPs Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Derek O'Brien both expressed their disagreement. However, the budget received support from the general public, industry groups and all five Rail Unions. TMC chairperson and Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee declared that she will not allow any hike in railway fares proposed in the Railway Budget. Banerjee denied being consulted by Railway Minister on the issue of fare hike. On the same day, Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to dismiss Dinesh Trivedi as Minister of Railways and give the portfolio to another AITC member of parliament Mukul Roy.

Initially, Trivedi requested a written confirmation from Mamata Banerjee before resigning, as he had received conflicting reports on the same from the Leader of the Trinamool Congress parliamentary party - Sudeep Bandyopadhyay and the chief whip of Trinamool Congress in Lok Sabha - Kalyan Banerjee. Finally, on 18 March 2012, Trivedi resigned after making a direct phone call to Mamata Banerjee for confirmation of the party position. Later, Trivedi explicitly clarified that he had resigned because Trinamool Congress and Mamata Banerjee asked him to resign, but that he had received "communication" that neither PM nor Congress would request for his resignation, with the result that "..if I had not resigned on that particular evening (last Sunday), I could have brought uncertainty to government itself and that is not my job". On forwarding the resignation to the President with recommendation of acceptance, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praised the budget presented by Trivedi and expressed "regret" on his "departure".

Electoral History Rajya Sabha High Commissioner to Bangladesh on 27 April 2026, he was appointed as the high commissioner of India to Bangladesh, in Dhaka succeeding Ambassador Pranay Kumar Verma. His appointment to Dhaka came at a time when both India and Bangladesh are looking at repairing the bilateral ties that came under strain during the tenure of interim government of Muhammad Yunus.

Personal life Trivedi is married to Minal, who holds a PhD in genetics. They have a son. Position Forum Chairman Indo EU Parliamentarians forum Member Indo American Forum of Parliamentarians Member Indo British Forum of Parliamentarians Member Indo France Forum of Parliamentarians Member Indo German Forum of Parliamentarians Member Indo UK Forum of Parliamentarians Member Indo Japan Forum of Parliamentarians Member Aspan Dialogue Think Tank, USA Member Aspan Euro