New Delhi: The West Bengal government informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it will carry out a fresh exercise to identify Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the state, which is expected to be completed within a time period of three months.
Supreme Court Hearing: West Bengal to Complete Fresh OBC Identification in 3 Months
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the state, made this submission before a two-judge bench led by Justice B R Gavai. The bench is hearing the West Bengal government’s appeal against the Calcutta High Court’s May 2024 judgment that struck down the classification of 77 communities, mostly Muslims, as OBCs, which had made them eligible for reservation benefits.
Sibal informed the bench, also comprising Justice A G Masih, that “the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes has informed the West Bengal government that it would conduct the benchmark survey on communities who have applied to the Commission for inclusion in the OBC list of the state.” The bench accepted Sibal’s request to adjourn the matter for three months and scheduled it for hearing in July.
West Bengal Government Plans New OBC Survey After Calcutta High Court Ruling
Justice Gavai noted that, “If the entire exercise is redone, and after that, fresh reservation is provided for, and nobody is aggrieved, then this question will become academic.”
In its order, the bench said, “Mr Sibal…states that the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes is undertaking an exercise of examining the issue of backwardness afresh. He further submits that the same will likely take 3 months. Post the matter in July. Needless to say, the said exercise would be without prejudice to the rights of either of the parties.”
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In May 2024, the Calcutta High Court struck down the OBC certificates issued by the West Bengal government since 2010, noting that “religion indeed appears to have been the sole criterion” for granting OBC status to these communities. The court also observed that “the selection of 77 classes of Muslims as backwards is an affront to the Muslim community as a whole.”
In August 2024, the Supreme Court issued a notice in the case, directing the Mamata Banerjee-led government to submit an affidavit detailing “the process followed for classification of 77 communities as OBCs: (1) the nature of survey (and) (2) whether there was a lack of consultation with the Commission (state backward panel) in respect of any communities in the list of 77 communities designated as OBCs.”
During the hearing of the state’s appeal in December last year, Justice Gavai had remarked that “reservation cannot be on the basis of religion.”
