Why are OBC lists in West Bengal being scrutinised? | Explained

The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has recommended the exclusion of 35 communities, mostly Muslim, from West Bengal’s Central list of Other Backward Classes (OBCs). This information was revealed in the winter session of Parliament this year by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which added that this advice was tendered by the Commission in January this year. This has come just months before West Bengal is set to vote in its next Assembly election in 2026. Moreover, the Supreme Court is in the middle of hearing pleas related to the manner in which certain communities were added to the State’s OBC lists. It remains to be seen if the Union government will initiate steps to act on the Commission’s recommendation.

Which communities have been excluded?

Officials of the NCBC have told The Hindu that 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,” said Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, under whose chairmanship the recommendation was made.

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.

Why were they included initially?

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 that 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 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.

Why are they now being excluded?

Now, nearly 15 years after the NCBC made these recommendations, the Commission, under the chairmanship of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, has changed its reasoning and asked that they be removed from the Central OBC list. This recommendation is a culmination of the efforts Mr. Ahir has made since he took charge of the Commission in 2022.

In February 2023, before Mr. Ahir had a Vice-Chair or any Members on his Commission, the NCBC undertook a study visit to West Bengal and began scrutinising the OBC list. Weeks after this study visit, Mr. Ahir told a press conference in New Delhi that there was “something wrong” with the State’s OBC lists, raising suspicion over the “high number of Muslim communities” in them. That year, the NCBC had also begun taking note of the Muslim communities in the OBC list of Karnataka.

This information was soon used by the BJP in its political rhetoric, accusing the Opposition of Muslim-appeasement at the cost of other communities in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. By May 2024, the Calcutta High Court had struck down the inclusion of a large number of communities from the OBC lists, largely Muslim. In that judgment, the High Court had concluded that religion had been 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 High Court judgment had impacted five lakh OBC certificates issued in the State since 2010.

But with the Supreme Court also hearing the matter, it stayed the High Court’s order. However, the NCBC proceeded with its scrutiny of the State’s Central OBC list, arguing that many of the State OBC communities found suspicious were common with a batch of communities added to the Central list in 2014. By January 2025, the NCBC, led by Mr. Ahir, recommended that 35 of the 37 communities added in 2014 be excluded from the Central OBC list of West Bengal. In December this year, he finished his tenure as NCBC Chair.

How had the erstwhile NCBC responded?

The issue now raised by the NCBC — of whether certain OBC classifications were made based on religion over backwardness — had been placed before the erstwhile Commission in 2011 as well. At the time of recommending the inclusion in 2011, the NCBC had first considered objections that this was a political request intended to benefit only Muslims.

In the first few pages of its advice, the Commission dismissed these objections raised by advocate Kartik Chandra Kapas, also then Eastern Zone Chairman of the National Union for Backward Classes, SC, ST, and Minorities. It had said at the time that these allegations were being made for publicity, adding, “We do not find any political angle in the action of the State government.”

The NCBC had further made it a point to stress that these communities had been found socially and educationally backwards with very little representation in the services by the State Commission, and that this conclusion had been accepted by the State government as well. It had thus concluded that the NCBC “cannot take up an independent survey” to determine communities’ backwardness because such an inquiry had already been conducted.

In the advice it tendered to the Central government at the time, the NCBC relied on the conclusions of the State Commission for Backward Classes. While in the case of the Devanga and Gangot communities, the NCBC advice mentioned their numbers in the population, school drop-out rates, income, etc., for most of the other communities, its advice referred to their backwardness without providing data for these socio-economic indicators.

While hearing this matter in December 2024, the Supreme Court of India had asked the State government for quantifiable data to show these communities’ backwardness, in terms of lack of representation in public employment, and on social and economic backwardness.

What next?

While the NCBC recommendation has been sent to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, no decision appears to have been taken by the Union government on whether to move ahead with amending the OBC lists.

Sources have told The Hindu that the NCBC, under the chairmanship of Mr. Ahir, has sent advice on inclusion and exclusion in the OBC lists of eight other States to the Ministry.

But hereon, unlike in 2014, the procedure now requires that any changes to Central OBC lists be brought through Parliament for notification by the President of India.

This is owing to the Constitution (102nd) Amendment Act, brought in by the first Narendra Modi-led government in 2018, which gave constitutional status to the NCBC and specified the role of Parliament and the President in identifying socially and educationally backward classes. In 2014, the law on identifying OBCs gave the executive power to notify lists based on the NCBC’s recommendation.