WB clears bills to oust Muslims from OBC list

The West Bengal assembly on Monday passed two bills to formally change Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation laws and remove various Muslim communities from the backward classes list as directed by the Calcutta high court in May 2024.

- Tanmay Chatterjee

The amendments also revised the reservation quota for OBCs from 10% to 7% and reorganised the OBC categories.

Till the West Bengal Backward Classes Welfare Department passed a new order on May 18, 2026, to comply with the high court order, the total reservation quota for OBCs was 17%. Of this, 10% was reserved for the OBC-A category (“most backward”) and 7% was meant for the OBC-B category (“backward”).

The May 18 order, a copy of which was seen by HT, kept only one list comprising 66 OBC communities that were “included in the state list of OBCs prior to 2010 for the purpose of availing reservation under article 16(4) of the Constitution of India.”

“The distribution of percentage of reservation as 10% for OBC (Category A) and 7% for OBC (Category B) were struck down,” the order said.

Among the Indian states, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have no notified OBC community. In Punjab, the OBC quota stands at 12% while Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand all have 14% reservation for OBCs.

Also, a 1993 law applicable to the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes relating to selection of OBCs was amended.

As of today, Bengal provides 45% reservation.

The reservation in West Bengal prior to this revision was Scheduled Caste or SC (22%) Scheduled Tribes or ST (6%) OBC-A (10%), OBC-B (7%) and a 3% reservation for people with disabilities irrespective of their presence in reserved or unreserved categories. The total reservation, however, was restricted to 45%, according to an order passed by the state on January 16, 2014.