In Major Setback For TMC Govt, Calcutta High Court Halts New OBC List; BJP Hails Ruling
The court clarified that the original list of 66 OBC communities recognised before 2010 will remain unaffected by the ruling.
The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday issued an interim stay on the West Bengal government's OBC list notification, putting a hold on all actions and processes based on the new list of Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities.
The court was hearing a series of petitions challenging the state government's executive order that added 140 subgroups—80 of which are Muslim—to the newly announced OBC list.
The division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha imposed the stay, which affects various key areas, including college and university admissions, government job recruitments, and social welfare benefits.
The court also stayed the implementation of the newly introduced 100-point roster for jobs, which had been designed based on the updated OBC list.
However, the court clarified that the original list of 66 OBC communities recognised before 2010 will remain unaffected by the ruling.
The previous list, which was largely invalidated by the High Court on May 22, 2024, had 113 subgroups, comprising 77 Muslim and 36 non-Muslim communities.
The Bengal Assembly passed the new notification last week in response to the court's earlier decision, which struck down the categorisation of OBC-A and OBC-B groups introduced after 2011.
Several petitions challenging the new state executive order were submitted to the High Court, with the issue still being under consideration by the Supreme Court.
The petitioners urged the court to stay the order, describing it as a 'blatant violation" of the High Court division bench's ruling issued on May 22.
The court order, being viewed as a major setback for the ruling Trinamool, was largely hailed by the BJP today, with Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari calling it a 'landmark verdict."
'I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Hon'ble High Court at Calcutta for the landmark decision to stay the inclusion of 76 Muslim classes in the new OBC list prepared by the Mamata Banerjee Government. This is a resounding victory of the Judiciary against an arrogant State Government that has repeatedly flouted constitutional norms for its narrow political gains," he said in an X post.
I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Hon'ble High Court at Calcutta for the landmark decision to stay the inclusion of 76 Muslim classes in the new OBC list prepared by the Mamata Banerjee Government. This is a resounding victory of the Judiciary against an arrogant State…— Suvendu Adhikari (@SuvenduWB) June 17, 2025
Adhikari added that the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government's approach, reflected in the inclusion of nearly 90 per cent of new Muslim groups in the OBC list, represents a 'direct affront to the principles of equality and fairness."
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From the Opinions Editor: NCERT textbook revisions — a point-to-point counter isn't enough
Dear Readers, Revision of social science textbooks, especially history readers, has become par for the course. Most times, this exercise is not guided by the scholarly imperative to mirror developments in knowledge. Instead, it seems to bear the ideological hallmarks of those in power. Textbooks have borne this burden for long. However, there's still a difference in today's restructuring of reading material compared to schoolbook rewriting exercises of the past. In the last five years, parts of history textbooks have been either excised or modified and the changes have been ascribed to a variety of factors – from rationalising content to reducing the burden on students. These exercises claim to be motivated by a desire to ensure student 'well-being', but carry imprints of the ruling regime's anxiety to flatten social complexities. 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Kings and sultans were not accountable for their actions, statecraft had very different objectives and wars were often critical to empire-building. All this is historical common sense. However, it's yet to become a general common sense. Narratives of the pre-modern era continue to be framed around heroes and villains. The search for a protonationalist in Ashoka, Akbar or Shivaji – depending on ideological inclination –and describing a Mahmud of Ghazni or Allaudin Khalji or Aurangzeb as evil might seem somewhat different endeavours. But both approaches obscure an understanding of epochs, much removed in time – Mahmud of Ghazini lived in the 10th-11th centuries, the Khaljis in the 13th and 14th century and the last great Mughal ruled from 1658-1707. That the latest revisions in textbooks bracket a more than 500-year period under the shibboleth of 'Dark Age' shows that even a section of historians – affiliated to the ruling regime – carry such blinkers. The challenge, in large measure, has to do with a historiographical deficit, plugging which remains a work in progress. Indian historians have produced groundbreaking studies on the extractive nature of medieval kingdoms, the ebbs and flows of commerce, the caste system and rise of kingdoms far away from sultanates in Delhi. Yet, an understanding of violence in pre-modern times is a relatively recent historiographical pursuit. Charges of destruction of places of worship continue to be countered by narratives which stress the political impulses behind such violence – as opposed to religious motives. The standard response also is that instances of destruction of places of worship by sultans and badshahs were far fewer, compared to the grants they gave to temples and monasteries. A historian should, of course, be judged by her fealty to facts. Viewed from that perspective, there is nothing wrong in how most professional historians have responded to allegations of 'brutality' levied on Islamic kings. However, today the challenge in classrooms – and beyond – is not just to provide a point-to-point counter. The internet, political propaganda, social media, films and TV make lives information heavy. Whatsapp chats have precipitated the collapse of some of the traditional filters on information. How can narratives that place violence in medieval times in their historical context help? Why do people need to understand the complexities of times when rulers could destroy some temples and give grants to many others? What purpose would it serve to depict Mughal, and several other, rulers as complex personalities who had the blood of their kin on their hand and yet presided over great cultural refinement? Why tell the stories of Shivaji's successors who struck terror in people in Bengal? Studies placing personalities in their times are, of course, needed for purely epistemological purposes. History is at its most vigorous, when it not only celebrates the resilience of societies but also tries to understand fault lines. The search for syncretism in medieval times was driven by a young nation's desire to place a salve on the wounds of Partition as well as the imperative to counter the colonial historian's charge that Indian history, before the arrival of Britishers, was nothing but an account of communal feuding. Histories of pre-modern violence, not prejudiced by colonial blinkers and innocent of sectarian agendas, have been few and they have not gone beyond academia. But why disturb the student's 'well-being' by introducing such complexities in textbooks? The latest changes have been introduced in Class VIII textbooks – a time when youngsters step into their teens. They are introduced to complicated concepts in mathematics and science – cell division, for instance. Why not in the social sciences? A textbook is perhaps the only text of history that a large majority of people, who do not engage with the discipline for professional purposes, will encounter in their lives – while they would be inundated with myriad accounts of the past. Critics of the revisions are, therefore, right in underlining the importance of rigour in reading materials. The task also is to find ways to communicate the complexity that informs their scholarship outside select circles – a difficult yet necessary imperative for the historian, inside and outside academia. Till next time, Kaushik
