'This Is The Golden Moment For Me': Former Trinamool MP Dinesh Trivedi Joins BJP Ahead Of Bengal Assembly Polls

Former Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Dinesh Trivedi on Saturday (6 March) joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in the presence of party’s national president JP Nadda.

Union Minister and senior leader Piyush Goyal was also present on the occasion to welcome the former Railways Minister to the BJP fold ahead of the crucial West Bengal assembly elections.

"This is the golden moment for me, for which I have been waiting for a long time. Nadda ji and my friends knew I was waiting for this. I never left ideology. The nation was above everything for me. Every person believes that PM Narendra Modi and BJP will keep the nation secure," Trivedi said, reports Times of India.

Trivedi was considered a close confidant of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee. He also had a short stint at the central government as the Union Railways Minister in former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government.

However, Trivedi resigned from that post on Banerjee’s insistence as the she expressed her displeasure over the railways budget in 2012.

Trivedi had, earlier in February this year, unexpectedly resigned from the Rajya Sabha, saying that he lamented the growing state of political violence in West Bengal.

He expressed gratitude towards the TMC for sending him to the upper house but mentioned that he was feeling suffocated now and wanted to work for the eastern state.

Greeting Trivedi on his entry into the party, Nadda said, “Dinesh Trivedi was the right person in the wrong party, now he is in the right party.”

The West Bengal polls will begin from 27 March and will be conducted in eight separate phases till 29 April. The election results will be announced on 2nd May.