Bengal govt starts process for challenging interim stay on publication of final notification on new OBC list

Kolkata, June 25 (IANS) The West Bengal government has started the process of challenging the interim stay imposed by a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on June 17 on issuing the final notification for the new Other Backward Class (OBC) list by the state government till July 31 this year.

Sources said that the state government has already approached the Supreme Court for permission to file a special leave petition, challenging the Calcutta High Court order.

In the plea to the apex court, sources said, the state government has argued that if the interim stay imposed by the Calcutta High Court on issuing the final notification for the fresh OBC list prevails till July 31, the process for recruitments under this category as directed by the apex court earlier would be stalled.

While imposing an interim stay in the matter on June 17, Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Rajasekhar Mantha also observed that the previous four to five notifications issued by the state government on the fresh survey to prepare the fresh OBC list violated the apex court order in the matter.

The fresh OBC list was supposed to include 140 communities, and the interim stay was perceived as a major blow to the state government.

To recall, in May last year, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court cancelled all the OBC certificates issued in West Bengal after 2010, which ideally meant that all such certificates issued during the current Trinamool Congress regime in the state since 2011 stood cancelled.

Following this order from the same division bench of Justice Chakraborty and Justice Mantha, over 5 00,000 OBC certificates issued during that period stood cancelled and could not be used for enjoying the reservation quota for jobs.

The West Bengal government moved the Supreme Court, and in March this year, the apex court allowed the state government to conduct a fresh survey to identify the OBCs in the state.

However, the West Bengal unit of BJP, had been questioning the pattern of the survey since the beginning claiming that the fresh survey process was a blatant example of appeasement politics of Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress which was evident from the disproportionate inclusion of almost 90 per cent new Muslim Classes in the OBC list which again was directly affront to the principles of equality and fairness.

Thereafter, a petition was filed at the Calcutta High Court challenging the pattern of the fresh survey. The petitioner accused the state government of entertaining applications only from those 113 OBC communities that were scrapped by the Calcutta High Court last year.

Finally, on June 17, the division bench of Justice Chakraborty and Justice Mantha imposed an interim stay on the issuance of the final notification for a fresh OBC list in West Bengal by the state government till July 31 this year

--IANS

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