The West Bengal government on Tuesday said to the Supreme Court that the state commission for backward classes was examining the issue of backwardness afresh. According to news agency PTI, the state government informed a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih that the exercise of the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes was likely to be completed within three months.
Appearing for the state, senior advocate Kapil Sibal requested the bench to post the hearing after three months and apprised the bench of the decision of the state. The bench noted the submission of Sibal and posted the matter in July. According to the court, the exercise would be without prejudice to the rights of either of the parties in the proceedings.
According to the PTI report, the pleas, including the one by the state, have challenged the Calcutta High Court's May 22, 2024 verdict that struck down the OBC status of several castes in West Bengal granted since 2010. The high court held as illegal their reservation in the public sector jobs and also in the state-run educational institutions.
"Religion indeed appears to have been the sole criterion for declaring these communities as OBCs," it said.
The high court also said the "selection of 77 classes of Muslims as backwards is an affront to the Muslim community as a whole".
In August last year, the top court had asked the state government to provide quantifiable data on the social and economic backwardness of fresh castes it had included in the OBC list and on their inadequate representation in the public sector jobs. It also asked the state to file an affidavit giving the details of the consultations, if any, conducted by it and the state's backward classes panel before including the 37 castes, mostly in the Muslim groups in the OBC list.