New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi had a spring in his stride as he hopped around the forecourt of the Parliament House this Monday dishing out the choicest sound-bites. “Since achhe din are nowhere in sight, please give us back our bure din,” he said.
The former Railways Minister had been authorised by party chief Mamata Banerjee to articulate the TMC stand on the Union Budget 2018.
Trivedi had finally found his voice after been relegated to the margins within TMC five years back for his political insouciance towards Didi. Mamata Banerjee had then rushed to Delhi seeking Railway Minister Trivedi’s resignation from the Union Cabinet for having increased passenger fares.
But now it seems, Trivedi is back in the reckoning in the TMC circles. He was recently deputed by Mamata to represent the party at an opposition march in Mumbai ahead of the Budget session. He was present at the launch of Yashwant Sinha’s Rashtra Manch in Delhi. And he, along with Saugata Roy will be speaking for TMC on the Budget Debate.
TMC observers see a characteristic imprint of Mamata in Trivedi’s rehabilitation after five long years. “That’s how she conducts her politics to maintain a balance of power in the party,” says a senior journalist from the state.
Fifteen years ago, Sudeep Bandhopadhyay learned this lesson the hard way. The TMC MP who was seen to be close to the then deputy PM LK Advani was on the verge of making it to the Union Council of ministers. Mamata instead faxed a letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee seeking to know if BJP was inducting a party nominee in the government without her consent.
It took almost one decade for Sudeep Bandopadhyay to regain his leader’s trust to finally take oath as a minister in UPA II led by Manmohan Singh.
There have been instances galore when the TMC leader has shuffled her pack to check and balance power equations with amazing dexterity. Mukul Roy for one realised it a tad too late.
A close aide of the West Bengal CM and a thorough organisation man instrumental in establishing TMC in Bengal, Mukul fell out with the leadership after the last LS polls. He remained in the party though. In December 2016, ahead of the Assembly elections, TMC chief invited Roy for dinner in Delhi. Thereafter, Mukul worked for the party in the elections which Trinamool won comfortably. Relations between the two soured once again, and Roy finally resigned from Rajya Sabha to join the BJP.
There have been instances when the state CM has not minced words in publically cutting people to size. “At a meeting of party MPs last year, she told an aspiring MP not to get involved in a particular ‘political issue’. That was a comment on his non-political background,” says a party observer.
For now, it’s achhe di for Dinesh da. Trivedi interestingly has also been awarded the Best Parliamentarian Award. The only West Bengal MP to get it after Somnath Chatterjee, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, and Pranab Mukherjee.
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