The government has given the post of minister to Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Dinesh Trivedi, a sign of the importance New Delhi attaches to ties with Dhaka at a time when the two sides are mending their ties, people familiar with the matter said.
Trivedi is the first political appointee to be chosen for the key post in Dhaka in nearly five decades. A notification issued by the Union Home Ministry on Wednesday said that Trivedi “has been given a position equivalent to a Union Cabinet Minister in the scale of precedence.”
While there have been precedents of ambassadors, most of them political appointees, achieving Cabinet minister status, even long-time observers of Indian diplomacy have been hard-pressed to cite cases from recent years. For example, the late Congress leader Siddhartha Shankar Rai was given the position of a minister when he served as US ambassador during 1992-1996. It was also given to a handful of former Union ministers on their appointment as envoys.
The status granted to Trivedi, which the notification described as his “personal action”, will apply only to ceremonial functions and will not change the precedence table, which is a list of dignitaries and officials in order of precedence on matters of protocol, the people said.
However, sources indicated that this status is aimed at enhancing the envoy’s prestige and signaling that he has a direct line to the top leadership in New Delhi. At the same time, Trivedi’s enhanced status is intended to help him communicate more directly with Bangladesh’s political leadership rather than the relatively junior officials in the Foreign Ministry.
The development comes at a time when efforts by India and Bangladesh to repair their relations – which reached an all-time low when Sheikh Hasina’s government collapsed in the face of student-led protests in August 2024 and was replaced by the interim administration led by Muhammad Yunus – have reached a difficult stage once again.
The Indian side made coordinated outreach to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which won the general elections in February, including sending Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to attend the inauguration of Prime Minister Tariq Rahman in the same month.
A visit by Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman in April, when he met with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Oil Minister Hardeep Puri, resulted in further steps to normalize relations, including resuming existing mechanisms to address differences and strengthen cooperation in trade and energy.
However, several developments after that — including the election campaign for Assam and West Bengal assembly elections, which saw illegal migration from Bangladesh, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s comments about Bangladesh, and interviews by Sheikh Hasina from Indian territory in which she criticized the BNP government — affected efforts to normalize relations, the people said.
Trivedi, who arrived in Bangladesh on June 12 on foot through a land border checkpoint, is expected to take on the task of rebuilding the relationship after presenting his credentials to Bangladesh President Mohammad Shahabuddin in Dhaka on Thursday. As a first step shortly after taking office, Trivedi announced the resumption of normal visa processes in Bangladesh – which were suspended during the violent protests in mid-2024 – and said that applications for tourist visas would be accepted from June 28.
