Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 16: The new BJP government in West Bengal on Saturday ordered re-verification of all caste certificates for inclusion in the list of the reserved categories, particularly the “Other Backward Classes” (OBC), during the tenure of the previous Trinamool Congress (TMC) since 2011 on the ground that the authenticity and genuineness of some caste certificates have been challenged by different quarters.
“Considering the importance and sensitivity of the matter, and as directed in a review meeting chaired by the competent authority, re-verification of such caste certificates at the level of the respective issuing authorities will be done in accordance with the prevailing norms and statutory provisions,” stated a letter issued by the Secretary of Backward Classes Welfare Department to all the District Magistrates on May 14.
About 1.69 crore SC, ST and OBC certificates have been issued in the State since 2011. The notification points out that about 47.8 lakh certificates—including 32.51 lakh SC certificates, 6.65 lakh ST certificates and 8.64 lakh OBC certificates—were issued under the Duare Sarkar camps during the previous Trinamool Congress regime.
Newly appointed Minister for Tribal Development and Backward Classes Kshudiram Tudu had raised the issue of fake and irregular caste certificates being issued soon after he took oath on May 9. “During the Trinamool Congress regime, a large number of fake and irregular SC, ST and OBC certificates were issued. Many people availed of benefits using these certificates,” the Minister said, adding that action would be taken against officials under whose supervision such certificates were issued.
Since coming to power following its victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has started investigations into several initiatives undertaken during the Trinamool Congress regime between 2011 and 2026.
The matter of issuing caste certificates to ineligible people had become a major concern in the State’s Jangalmahal region (Purulia, Jhargram, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur), and the BJP had promised action against such practices if voted to power. A separate controversy had also erupted over the inclusion of Muslims in the OBC list of West Bengal during the TMC regime.
The May-14 order also added that caste certificates issued to persons and dependents whose names have been deleted from the electoral roll of the State in the recently concluded SIR exercise shall be examined and may be cancelled following due process.
The entire exercise emanate from the report last year of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) which had recommended deletion of 35 communities, mostly Muslim, from West Bengal’s Central list of Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
According to the NCBC sources, the communities recommended by it for exclusion are part of a batch of communities that were added to the Central OBC list of West Bengal in 2014, just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections that year. “These are part of the Muslim communities that were added suspiciously. Maybe one or two of the communities recommended for exclusion are non-Muslim,” the sources said.
The batch of communities the NCBC is referring to is a set of 37 communities that were added to West Bengal’s Central OBC list in early 2014, based on its own 2011 recommendation. The State Commission for Backward Classes had, in November 2010, studied 46 castes and communities, concluding that they qualify as socially and educationally backward classes who are under-represented in services. These groups were added to the State OBC list.
By 2011, the request from West Bengal to include these communities in the Central OBC list was examined by the erstwhile National Commission for Backward Classes, headed by Justice M. N. Rao. This NCBC recommended that 37 of these communities be included in the Central OBC list. 35 of them were Muslim communities that were thought to have converted from “lower Hindu castes.” Most of the members of these communities worked as manual labourers, rickshaw pullers, bidi rollers, barbers, agricultural labourers, tailors, etc. The only non-Muslim groups were the Devanga and Gangot communities.
At the time of recommending the inclusion of these communities in the Central OBC list of West Bengal, the erstwhile NCBC relied wholly on the findings of the State Commission for Backward Classes, based on which the State had also included them in the State OBC lists.
In discussing each of the communities’ justification for inclusion, the Commission, at the time, concluded that they were all socially backward in terms of how they were treated in society, educationally backward in terms of school admissions and drop-out rates, and economically backwards in terms of being landless, or working menial jobs, or being stuck to specific caste/community professions.
In nearly all of the cases, the commission mentioned their lack of representation in the services. With regard to some of the Muslim communities, the NCBC said their professions, such as barbers, were historically associated with being performed by “lower castes” and hence, these communities faced discrimination from both Muslims and Hindus in society, which was leading to their social, educational, and economic backwardness.
Similarly, the Commission had noted in some cases that the communities’ Hindu counterparts in other States had already been classified as OBCs or, in some cases, Scheduled Castes (SCs). And in some other cases, the Commission said the communities were treated “like Scheduled Castes” in their new faith of Islam, with evidence of them being asked to hold Namaz separately.
The NCBC’s recommendations to include these communities happened in the backdrop of government-commissioned reports such as the Sachar Committee Report of 2006 and the Ranganath Mishra Committee Report of 2007, which had looked at the marginalisation of Muslims in India and the socio-educational and economic status of historically Dalit communities that had converted to Islam or Christianity, respectively.
The Sachar Committee Report had compared the marginalisation of Muslims in India to that of the SC communities, whereas the Ranganath Mishra Committee had studied them as Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians, concluding that Dalit communities continued to face a caste barrier post conversion of faith, advocating de-linking the SC classification from a religion test.