He is now expected to fill the post of Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, which was previously reserved for doyens of the diplomatic corps like Subimal Dutt, Mushkund Dubey and Krishnan Srinivasan, BJP leader and former lawmaker Dinesh Trivedi.
Trivedi, who has served stints in the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), will be the first political appointee to hold this key post in Dhaka in many decades. Before that, among the few who could be considered political appointees were Subimal Dutt and Samar Sen, the first officials to hold the position after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, but even these belonged to the erstwhile Indian Civil Service.
For the Indian diplomatic corps, his time in Dhaka as an envoy often led to greater things, with several High Commissioners becoming Foreign Ministers. The latest in this line is Harsh Vardhan Shringla, who became foreign minister shortly after serving as envoy to Bangladesh during 2016-2019.
Trivedi will also be the first politician appointed to serve as envoy in the region in nearly three decades, although Nepal and Sri Lanka have seen a series of politicians and international civil service officials hold the position of envoy. In the case of Sri Lanka, the position of High Commissioner was held by a series of politicians and center officials between 1947 and 1969.
Among the political appointees sent to Kathmandu as ambassador was Lt. Gen. SK Sinha, the former deputy army chief who played a key role in mending bilateral ties in 1990 after relations deteriorated over disagreements over trade and transit issues.
In past decades, ambassadorial appointments were sometimes given as a reward to political party leaders after they performed poorly in local elections, or to senior military or police officers after a long and distinguished career.
After initially considering appointing a senior diplomat to the post in Dhaka towards the end of 2025, the government reconsidered after the BNP won the general election in February, people familiar with the matter said. Sources said the thinking in New Delhi was that some diplomats had misread the situation in Bangladesh and a political appointee was needed to take relations forward after a period when the Indian side was seen as closely allied with the previous Awami League government led by Sheikh Hasina.
The sources said that the Indian government last week began the formal process of seeking an agreement or diplomatic agreement to deploy Trivedi. The Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal – where Trivedi hails from the state bordering Bangladesh – were another factor said to have gone in his favour.
India currently has only two political appointees who serve as ambassadors – former Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra was appointed ambassador to the US after his retirement, while former Indian Administrative Service officer Arun Goel was sent as an envoy to Croatia after a long bureaucratic career that included stints as secretary in the Ministry of Heavy Industries and the Ministry of Culture.
The BJP government also sent former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief R K Raghavan as an envoy to Cyprus and former Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag as an envoy to Seychelles.
