Cal HC to hear stay plea on new OBC list today

Kolkata: Calcutta High Court will decide on Tuesday whether to stay the state executive order that includes 140 subgroups, of which 80 are Muslims, in the new OBC list. The earlier list, struck down by the HC to a large extent, had 113 OBC subgroups with 77 Muslims and 36 others.
Bengal assembly passed the new notification last week after the HC, on May 22, 2024, struck down the categorisation of the prevalent OBC A and B categories made post-2011.
A host of petitions challenging the new state executive order were filed in the high court even when the matter was pending before the Supreme Court. The petitioners prayed for a stay on the executive order, calling it a "blatant violation" of a HC division bench order on May 22.
A division bench of justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha on Monday adjourned the hearing of the matter till 2 pm on Tuesday to decide whether the prayer for a stay by petitioner Purabi Das could be granted.
Senior counsel Bansuri Swaraj, supporting the prayer for a stay, pleaded that the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes had violated guidelines set by the division bench for determining inclusion of communities under the OBC category.
Citing the division bench order, Swaraj claimed it had directed a "fair, transparent and just" procedure for the process and asked for a survey of the whole population. "The commission held that it would be an absurd and unworkable proposition to conduct a survey of the whole population on each and every occasion the commission considers inclusion of communities under OBC category. The commission instead chose Ashleyan's formula to determine the sample size for the survey," she said.
Swaraj cited a nine-bench judgment of Supreme Court (Indra Sahwney vs Union of India) to argue that a survey means a survey of the whole population. Advocate general Kishore Datta submitted that the matter was pending before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the state had to urgently make recruitments and admissions in colleges and universities under OBC category, he said.
Justice Chakraborty observed that the state could make recruitments from among the 66 OBC categories before 2010, which the HC didn't touch. Justice Mantha held that the state could undertake a special recruitment drive from among the new OBC list later.
"We want to examine the process and its sanctity. We also want to see whether these classes were appropriately represented in the state. Now, if the state jumps the horse before the cart, we are left nowhere," Justice Mantha observed.

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