Bengal passes OBC amendment bills, removes 77 Muslim communities from list

The West Bengal Assembly on Monday passed two bills to amend laws pertaining to Other Backward Classes reservations and remove several Muslim communities from the OBC list as directed by the Calcutta High Court in May 2024, the Hindustan Times reported.

The amendments will revise the share of the Other Backward Classes quota in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state to 7% from 17% and reorganise the backward classes categories. A law applicable to the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes was also amended.

The West Bengal government’s earlier list of Other Backward Classes had 113 sub-groups, of which 77 were Muslim and 36 non-Muslim. The High Court had struck down the list in May 2024 and reduced OBC reservations to 7% from 17%.

The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government at the time had challenged the judgement in the Supreme Court.

Introduced by Backward Classes Development Minister Gourishankar Ghosh, the bills were passed with 186 MLAs voting in favour and 17 against it in the 294-member Assembly.

Six members abstained from voting, The New Indian Express reported. A section of TMC rebels led by Ritabrata Banerjee staged a walkout, the Hindustan Times reported.

Ghosh told the Assembly that “as directed by the High Court, all communities included in the OBC list without any survey by the former government, solely to offer undue advantage...

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