Dinesh Trivedi Birthday: Must-know facts about the former Indian Railways Minister and politician

Dinesh Trivedi, an Indian politician and former Member of Parliament from Rajya Sabha and also from the Lok Sabha representing the Barrackpore constituency of West Bengal, was born on June 4, 1950, in New Delhi. And, on this day in 2023, take a moment to know more about his contributions to India’s political sphere and development. 

All you need to know about Dinesh Trivedi:

• Trivedi is the youngest child of the Gujarati couple, Hiralal Trivedi and Urmilaben Trivedi, who migrated to India from Karachi during India’s Partition, where all his other siblings were born.

• Trivedi attended boarding schools in Himachal Pradesh, before graduating in commerce from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta. He then took a loan of Rs. 20,000 and completed his MBA from The University of Texas at Austin. Trivedi also trained to be a pilot, a result of his childhood dream of flying for the Indian Air Force. He is a trained sitar player and enjoys classical music.

• Worked in Chicago for a few years but quit his job to start a freight company in Kolkata in the 1980s, eventually entering politics with the Congress in the same decade but he joined the Janata Dal in 1990. Became the first general secretary of the Trinamool Congress when the party was founded in 1998.

• He was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1990 to 1996 from Gujarat as a Janata Dal candidate and from 2002 to 2008 from West Bengal as an AITMC candidate. In the 2009 elections, he contested for the Trinamool Congress party and won from Barrackpore to join the Lok Sabha, becoming the Cabinet Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare.

• Became the Railways Minister in 2011 after Mamata Banerjee quit the post. As the Railways Minister, he had advocated instituting a rail regulator to fix rail fares, a policy that was diametrically opposite to the one by earlier railway ministers. He had also advocated de-politicising the railways and would like to restructure the Indian Railway Board, which lacked synergy before he joined. 

• Trivedi believed that the Indian Railways could add 2% to India's GDP and was willing to go against his party's line of not hiking the fares.

• He also stated that the Railways Ministry was open to the idea of privatisation, something that the subsequent Modi Government would integrate, apart from the idea of building a high-speed rail system with Japanese help.

• Resigned from his post in 2012 following a controversy over a significant hike in fares for railway passengers.

• In the 2019 Lok Sabha Election, he contested from Barrackpore Lok Sabha and lost to Arjun Singh (Former MLA of Vatpara assembly). After his defeat, he was elected as a Rajya Sava MP and after a few days, he quit his relationship with TMCP and joined BJP.