Sudarshan Ghosh Dastidar is an Indian doctor and a former Indian politician and the Minister for Environmental Affairs in the Government of West Bengal. He is also an MLA, elected from the Mahisadal constituency in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly election. His wife, Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a gynecologist, has been involved in active politics under the stewardship of Trinamool Congress leader and Chief Minister of West Bengal, Ms. Mamata Banerjee. She is an elected member of the 15th, 16th and 17th Lok Sabha from Barasat in West Bengal and the Deputy Leader of the Trinamool in Lok Sabha. Before his recent induction into state politics he has been known as one of the leading infertility practitioners in India since 1981. He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in test tube baby research in the country. Education Dr. Sudarsan Ghosh Dastidar received his MBBS degree and also his M.D in Obstetrics and Gynecology from R.G.Kar Medical College, then affiliated to University of Calcutta. He subsequently visited several advanced centres for training such as Cornell University/Weill Medical Center, New York; and the Albert Einstein Institute in the United States of America, Erasmus University, Netherlands. He met Prof Robert Edwards and went to Bourne Hall Clinic in Cambridge for training. Initiation into research Dr. Sudarsan Ghosh Dastidar was a beloved student of late Dr. Subhas Mukhopadhyay who was successful in delivering India's first test tube baby in 1978, the same year that Dr. Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe delivered the world's first IVF baby in Cambridge, England. His novel work however met with intense criticism from the medical community since his work was not ideally documented in terms of micro-photographic evidence of the program and others. He tragically took his life. After his tragic demise Dr. Ghosh Dastidar and Dr. B. Chakravarty jointly developed a successful IVF program in Kolkata which gave birth to India's first IVF boy in 1986. Research and career Their program was successful in delivering Imran, India's second test-tube baby by IVF in 1986, which created a stir and was widely covered in the press. Before that they were successful in achieving pregnancies by IUI and reported it in the 3rd World Congress on IVF, Helsinki, Finland in 1984. In 1991 Dr. Ghosh Dastidar independently established Calcutta's second test tube baby program called Infertility Clinic and IVF Centre in Gariahat, Calcutta which is credited with