Dinesh Trivedi, a previous TMC MP who stepped down from Rajya Sabha in February, entered BJP in the attendance of JP Nadda party president on Saturday.
Former Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha leader Dinesh Trivedi entered the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday, the latest in a long line of such high-profile defections from the TMC to the BJP over the last few months. The 70-year-old change of path comes just weeks ahead of the West Bengal Assembly elections, a run that has already seen a bitter war of consolidation between both political parties.
Trivedi, who represented West Bengal in Rajya Sabha for the third time and pronounced his resignation in the House during the discussion on the Union budget, said he could not talk about violence in his state. He also said that, after reflecting at “the kind of violence happening in his state,” he was obliged to take a step and had to pursue his “conscience” of West Bengal and continue to work for “Bengal and the nation.
Trivedi, who has been associated with the TMC since 1998, served both as Union Railway Minister and as State Health and Family Welfare Union Minister, as a Member of Parliament from BarrackPore, and then as a Rajya Sabha member.
That was the golden moment I’d waiting for,” said Mr Trivedi today, in the company of Union Minister Piyush Goyal, after joining the BJP at the party head office in New Delhi BJP President JP Nadda welcomed him in the party.”Dinesh Trivedi was the right person in the wrong party, now he is in the right party,” Nadda said, welcoming the former railways minister into the party. Trivedi, on the other hand, described it as the “golden moment” he had awaited.
After resigning from the Rajya Sabha and the party with which he has been affiliated since its establishment, Dinesh Trivedi’s decision to join the BJP was only a matter of time.
In recent weeks, a series of current and former Trinamool representatives have flocked to the BJP. Actor Mithun Chakraborty, a former Rajya Sabha MP for the party, is scheduled to share the spotlight with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Kolkata tomorrow. It’s also ambiguous whether he’ll join the party or vote for it.
