Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 6: The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed proceedings before the Calcutta High Court in connection with the West Bengal government’s preparation of a fresh list of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) on which the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP in the state were at loggerheads for months.
A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai passed the stay order on the basis of a submission by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, for the State, that the High Court was intending to hear the case regardless of the fact that the apex court was seized of it. “We need a stay. The HC says it will continue hearing the whole matter and decide the case finally,” Mr Sibal submitted on behalf of the State of West Bengal to the surprise of the apex court.
“When the Supreme Court is seized of the matter, how can the HC hear the case?” a shocked Chief Justice of India BR Gavai asked. He also questioned the “anxiety” of the High Court to hear the case. The apex court posted the case after four weeks, clarifying the High Court should not proceed with the hearing until further orders.
In March, the State had sought three months from the Supreme Court on the ground that the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes was taking a fresh look at the “issue of Backward Classes” in the State. However, the High Court had ordered a stay on the new benchmark survey and notifications for classification and reservation of OBCs on June 17.
The High Court decision was based on petitions contending that the new survey was a violation of its May 2024 judgment, which had struck down a State policy to include several castes, largely Muslim communities, in the OBC list. In that judgment, the High Court had concluded that Hindu religion was the “sole criterion for declaring these communities as OBC.” It had found the “selection of 77 classes of Muslims as backwards an affront to the Muslim community as a whole.”
The 2024 High Court judgment had impacted five lakh OBC certificates issued in the State since 2010, a large number of them from the Muslim communities. It had struck down portions of the West Bengal Backward Classes (Other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) (Reservation of Vacancies in Services and Posts) Act, 2012.
Among the Sections nullified were Section 16, the second part of Section 2(h), and Section 5(a) of the Act, which distributed reservation percentages of 10% and 7% to the sub-classified categories. Consequently, the sub-classified categories OBC-A and OBC-B were removed from Schedule I of the Act.
The TMC and the BJP had been engaged in bitter war of words since the June, 2025 order of the High Court giving the interim stay on the State government’s notification of a new OBC list. The Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari said, “One of the reasons why [West Bengal Chief Minister] Mamata Banerjee looks so disturbed today is the HC’s stay order on the OBC list. She knows that 17% of Hindu OBCs have been left out. She tried to snatch their rights. On the other hand, she tried to fool nearly two crore Muslims. She thought she could give them OBC certificates like a ‘lollipop’ when she could not give them employment, education, and healthcare,” Mr Adhikari had said.
He added that the Chief Minister has “spelt doom” for the “hard-working Muslims who had dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, or civil servants as general category applicants.” Ms Banerjee in turn had accused the BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) of not wanting the OBC Bill to pass.
“This is for poor people, for the socially and economically backward class. We want reservations to stay for the Scheduled Castes and tribal people. But how can we snatch the rights of the 33% of people who have been here since Partition? Do you not want to help build them as people? 60 castes in the list were non-Muslims. You people burn up when you see Muslims… How can we erase history?” Ms Banerjee had said.
Pointing out that Calcutta High Curt’s order was only an interim stay and not a judgement, she had said, “The government did not prepare the list; it was prepared by the OBC [Commission]. A former senior justice of the Calcutta High Court is part of that. We had done everything to adhere to the High Court’s rules,” the Chief Minister had claimed.
The West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes was constituted in 1993 to “examine requests for inclusion of any class of citizens as a backward class in the lists and hear complaints of over-inclusion or under-inclusion of any backward class in such lists,” according to its website.
