Kolkata, 3 December (H.S.):

A major political row has erupted in West Bengal after the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) recommended the removal of 35 Muslim castes from the state’s Central OBC list. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday alleged that the decision exposes decades of appeasement politics practiced by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government, which they claim deprived genuinely backward Hindu communities of their rightful share.

The information was revealed in a written reply by Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment B. L. Verma to an unstarred question in Parliament, raised by Jagannath Sarkar, BJP MP from Ranaghat in Nadia district.

According to the minister’s reply,

“The National Commission for Backward Classes has given its advice for the exclusion of 35 castes from the Central List of OBCs for the state of West Bengal on 03.01.2025.”

Reacting to the development, BJP’s IT cell chief and party’s central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, said that including religious groups in OBC categories solely for electoral gain has been a long-running practice that severely affected genuinely backward Hindu communities.

“The Modi government is correcting decades of appeasement-driven distortions and ensuring that social justice is granted based on actual backwardness, not on vote-bank calculations. Mamata Banerjee’s regressive politics has reached its limit,” Malviya said.

Meanwhile, the issue of the West Bengal OBC list is already before the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the apex court deferred the hearing for four weeks and instructed that the Calcutta High Court must not proceed with the matter while it is pending before the Supreme Court.

On June 17 this year, a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court had issued an interim order directing the state government not to publish the final notification of the new OBC list until July 31.

Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh