Newz Desk, Durgapur: The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has recommended the removal of 35 castes belonging to the Muslim community from West Bengal’s Central OBC list, triggering a renewed political clash between the Centre and the Mamata Banerjee–led state government.
The development came to light after Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment B.L. Verma responded to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha, raised by Ranaghat MP Jagannath Sarkar. In his reply, Verma confirmed that the NCBC, on 3 January 2025, had advised excluding the identified castes from the Central OBC list for West Bengal.
The BJP quickly seized on the recommendation to accuse the Trinamool Congress government of manipulating OBC classification for “vote-bank politics”.
BJP IT cell chief and the party’s central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, issued a strong statement asserting that the NCBC’s findings exposed long-standing distortions in the state’s reservation framework.
“By clubbing religious groups under OBC categories for political gain, genuinely backward Hindu communities were denied rightful benefits,” Malviya said, adding that the Modi government was now “correcting decades of appeasement-led errors to ensure fair and merit-based social justice.”
Meanwhile, the legal battle over West Bengal’s revised OBC list continues. Earlier in December, the Supreme Court postponed hearing the case for four weeks and instructed the Calcutta High Court not to proceed further while the matter is pending before the apex court. A previous High Court order in June had restrained the state from issuing a final notification on its updated OBC list.
The Trinamool Congress is expected to respond once the full implications of the NCBC recommendation are reviewed, as the issue is likely to intensify the ongoing political confrontation between the Centre and the state.
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