He was the Union Minister of Railways and the Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, a member of the Barrackpore parliament, and later a member of Rajya Sabha.
Trinamool Congressional Deputy Dinesh Trivedi announced his resignation from the Rajya Sabha on Friday saying that he feels suffocated in the House because he cannot do anything about the violence taking place in his West Bengal state.
“If you sit here quietly and you can’t do anything, then you better give up here and go to the land of Bengal and be with the people,” he said in the Upper House of Parliament.
Trivedi said that the world looks to India when something happens. “What I mean is the way the violence is happening in our state. Sitting here, I am puzzled as to what I should do.”
The TMC MP said that he cannot bear various incidents that are happening in West Bengal. “I am grateful to my party for sending me here, but now I feel a bit suffocated. We can’t do anything and there are atrocities (happening). My voice of conscience is saying what Swami Vivekananda used to say: Get up, wake up and don’t stop. until the goal is reached, “Trivedi said when announcing his resignation from the House, shaking the TMC ahead of the West Bengal Assembly elections.
Rajya Sabha Vice President Harivansh Narayan Singh said there is due process for resigning from the House and asked Trivedi to submit his resignation in writing to the President.
Meanwhile, the general secretary in charge of the BJP in West Bengal, Kailash Vijayvargiya, welcomed Trivedi’s move saying that Trivedi was welcome to join the BJP in case he wanted to. Vijayvargiya said that many more TMC leaders felt claustrophobic in the “dynastic dispensation” led by Mamata.
The former Minister of Railways has been with the TMC since the party was formed in 1998 and he became its first general secretary. He had joined the Janata Dal in 1990, a few years after working with the Congress party. He was Minister of the Union of Railways and Minister of the State Union for Health and Family Welfare, Member of Parliament for Barrackpore and later a member of Rajya Sabha.
He was a member of the Upper House of Parliament from 1990 to 1996 from Gujarat as a candidate for Janata Dal and from 2002 to 2008 from West Bengal as a candidate for TMC. He recently lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Barrackpore to TMC MLA turned BJP candidate Arjun Singh.
In March 2012, the head of the Mamata Banerjee party made him resign as Union Minister of Railways. Banerjee was reportedly upset with Trivedi for his plan to increase train fares announced in the railway budget. Trivedi had not consulted the Trinamool Congress on the budget, according to a News18 report.
Trivedi is a prominent face of the TMC to reach non-Bengali voters who make up a large part of the population of Kolkata and North 24 Parganas.
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