India appoints BJP leader Dinesh Trivedi as high commissioner to Bangladesh

India on Monday named Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Union minister Dinesh Trivedi as its next high commissioner to Bangladesh.

The appointment is a rare instance of a non-Indian Foreign Service officer being named to the role and comes as New Delhi seeks to reset ties with Dhaka.

Trivedi will replace Indian Foreign Service officer Pranay Verma, who is moving to Brussels as India’s envoy to the European Union and the Kingdom of Belgium.

Trivedi served as railway minister in the Manmohan Singh government as a member of the Trinamool Congress before joining the BJP in 2021. He has been a member of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, representing constituencies in West Bengal and a Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat.

Ties between New Delhi and Dhaka were strained after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India in August 2024 following weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government. She had been in power for 16 years.

Bangladesh has repeatedly demanded that India extradite Hasina after a tribunal there sentenced her to death for alleged crimes against humanity. Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal held Hasina guilty of having ordered a deadly crackdown on the protests against her government. India has not agreed to the extradition request so far.

Following Hasina’s ouster, Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, headed Bangladesh’s interim government.

After parliamentary elections in February, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party formed the new government in the country. Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the party, was sworn in as prime minister.

In December, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wanted to return to Bangladesh.

In April, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman visited New Delhi, marking the first high-level bilateral engagement hosted by India since the Hasina government was ousted.