New Delhi: “I am feeling claustrophobic as corporate agencies are running my party. There is too much violence in my state,” lamented Dinesh Trivedi announcing his resignation as Trinamool Congress member from Rajya Sabha.
He said there was nothing wrong with joining BJP and also that he does not an ‘invitation’ to join the saffron party – where he had ‘great friends’ in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and also Home Minister Amit Shah.
Trivedi’s exit in clear term shows that things are going out of control in Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
The blow ought to massive for ‘Didi’ as Trivedi, who hails from Gujarat himself, had befriended the mercurial Trinamool supremo when she was almost a loner in Parliament especially her party was routed in Lok Sabha polls of 2004.
” I am resigning from this seat as I am answerable to my conscience, he said becoming perhaps the biggest deserter from the Mamata camp in national politics.
Dinesh Trivedi had ‘rebelled’ against Mamata as Union Railway Minister under Manmohan Singh regime when he allowed certain modest hike in railway fares in 2012 without actually taking the consent of the “powerful’ Trinamool chief.
A furious Mamata had directed Trivedi to quit and he was replaced by her with the then loyalist Mukul Roy. Ironically, after 2015, Roy also fell apart Mamata essentially over the issue of Trinamool-relationship with the central government and the BJP at the national level.
Roy is now a national vice president of BJP and has taken a pledge to end Trinamool ‘misrule’ in West Bengal.
Trivedi was once a consumer activist in Kolkata.
In 2019, he lost to Arjun Singh of BJP from Barrackpore parliamentary seat in Bengal. He had won the seat twice – 2009 and 2014.
Mamata, however, had accommodated to the Rajya Sabha which now looks futile if not a blunder by the Trinamool supremo.
Ms Banerjee had often sidelined Bengali leaders and senior parliamentarians like Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Swagat Roy but had given importance to the likes of Dinesh Trivedi, Derek O’ Brien and K D Singh.
Trivedi was born into a Gujurati family who were refugees from West Pakistan. His family settled in the then ‘Calcutta’. He also had ambitions of becoming a monk, a pilot in the Indian Air Force, and even an actor. In the 1990s, Dinesh Trivedi cultivated Janata Dal leadership and especially the Prime Minister V P to got himself elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujurat on a Janata Dal ticket.
While his resignation could be called an act driven by sheer opportunism as the poll season is turning much awkward for Trinamool leaders, Dinesh Trivedi seems to be much displeased by Mamata’s decision to enlist the services of poll strategist Prashant Kishor.
A visibly upset Dinesh Trivedi has said that those who did not know ABC of politics was now running Trinamool.
“In every person’s life, there comes a time when you have to make a decision. It was very good for me that I have five and a half years left, I could have lived comfortably as I have a big bungalow in Delhi. But we don’t enter public life for this. When there is so much violence, corruption and it has been our history that we have spoken against violence,” he said.
He further said, “If you sit here quietly and cannot do anything, then it is better that you resign from here and go to the land of Bengal and be with people”.
