the story So Far:
TeaThe National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has recommended the exclusion of 35 communities, mostly Muslims, from the central list of Other Backward Classes (OBC) in West Bengal. This information was revealed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in the winter session of Parliament this year, which said that this advice was given by the Commission in January this year. This comes just months before West Bengal goes to vote for the next assembly elections in 2026. Additionally, the Supreme Court is hearing petitions related to the manner in which certain communities are added to the state’s OBC list. It remains to be seen whether the central government will take steps to act on the commission’s recommendation.
Which communities have been excluded?
NCBC officials have told The Hindu The communities recommended by it for exclusion are part of a group of communities that were added to the Central OBC list of West Bengal in 2014, just before the Lok Sabha elections that year. “These are part of the Muslim communities that were added suspiciously. Maybe one or two of the communities that have been recommended to be excluded are non-Muslims,” said Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, under whose chairmanship the recommendation was made.
The communities the NCBC is referring to are a group of 37 communities that were added to the central OBC list of West Bengal in early 2014 based on a 2011 recommendation. The State Backward Classes Commission had studied 46 castes and communities in November 2010 and concluded that they qualify as socially and educationally backward classes that are under-represented in services. These groups were added to the state OBC list.
Until 2011, West Bengal’s request to include these communities in the central OBC list was examined by the erstwhile National Commission for Backward Classes headed by Justice MN Rao. This NCBC recommended that 37 of these communities be included in the central OBC list. Among them, 35 were Muslim communities who were believed to have converted from “lower Hindu castes”. Most of the members of these communities worked as manual labourers, rickshaw pullers, beedi rollers, barbers, agricultural labourers, tailors etc. The only non-Muslim groups were the Devanga and Gangot communities.
Why were they included initially?
While recommending the inclusion of these communities in the Central OBC list of West Bengal, the erstwhile NCBC had solely relied on the findings of the State Backward Classes Commission, based on which the State had also included them in the State OBC list.
Discussing each community’s justification for inclusion, the Commission concluded at that time that based on how they were treated in society, they were all socially backward, educationally backward in terms of school admission and drop-out rates, and economically backward in terms of being landless, or doing menial jobs, or being engaged in specific caste/community occupations. In almost all cases, the Commission noted their lack of representation in the services. With regard to some Muslim communities, the NCBC said that their professions, such as barbering, were historically associated with being performed by “lower castes” and therefore, these communities faced discrimination from both Muslims and Hindus in the society, which was leading to their social, educational and economic backwardness. Similarly, the Commission noted in some cases that the communities’ Hindu counterparts in other states were already classified as OBC or, in some cases, Scheduled Caste (SC). And in some other cases, the commission said the communities were treated “like Scheduled Castes” in their new faith in Islam, with evidence that they were asked to pray separately.
The NCBC’s recommendations to include these communities came in the backdrop of government-commissioned reports such as the 2006 Sachar Committee Report and the 2007 Ranganath Mishra Committee Report, which looked at the marginalization of Muslims in India and the socio-educational and economic status of historically Dalit communities who had converted to Islam or Christianity, respectively.
The Sachar Committee report had compared the marginalization of Muslims in India to that of SC communities, while the Ranganath Mishra Committee had studied them as Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians, concluding that Dalit communities continued to face caste barriers even after conversion, advocating separation of the SC classification from the religion test.
Why are they being kept out now?
Now, almost 15 years after the NCBC made these recommendations, the commission headed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Hansraj Gangaram Ahir has changed its reasoning and said they should be removed from the central OBC list. This recommendation is the culmination of efforts made by Mr. Ahir since he took charge of the Commission in 2022.
In February 2023, before Mr Ahir was vice-chairman or any member in the commission, the NCBC conducted a study tour of West Bengal and started examining the OBC list. A few weeks after this study visit, Mr Ahir said at a press conference in New Delhi that there was “something wrong” with the state’s OBC lists, raising doubts over the “high number of Muslim communities” in them. That year, the NCBC also started focusing on Muslim communities in the OBC list of Karnataka.
This information was soon used by the BJP in its political rhetoric, and accused the opposition of Muslim-appeasement at the expense of other communities ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. As of May 2024, the Calcutta High Court had stayed the inclusion of a large number of communities, mostly Muslims, from the OBC list. In that judgment, the High Court had concluded that religion was “the sole criterion for declaring these communities as OBCs”. It had found “the selection of 77 sections of Muslims as backward classes to be an insult to the Muslim community as a whole”. The High Court’s decision has affected five lakh OBC certificates issued in the state since 2010.
But the Supreme Court, while hearing the case, stayed the High Court order. However, the NCBC proceeded with its investigation of the state’s central OBC list, arguing that many of the OBC communities in the state found to be suspect had much in common with a batch of communities added to the central list in 2014. By January 2025, the NCBC under Mr Ahir recommended that 35 of the 37 communities added in 2014 be excluded from West Bengal’s central OBC list. In December this year, he completed his tenure as NCBC Chairman.
How did the erstwhile NCBC respond?
The issue now raised by the NCBC – whether certain OBC classifications were based on religion over backwardness – was also placed before the then Commission in 2011. While recommending inclusion in 2011, the NCBC first considered objections that it was a political request aimed only at benefiting Muslims.
In the first few pages of its advice, the Commission rejected these objections raised by advocate Karthik Chandra Kapas, who was also the then Eastern Zone President of the National Association of Backward Classes, SC, ST and Minorities. At that time it was said that these allegations were being made for publicity, “We do not see any political angle in the action of the state government.”
The NCBC had emphasized that these communities were found by the State Commission to be socially and educationally backward with little representation in the services, and this finding was also accepted by the State Government. It had thus concluded that the NCBC “could not conduct an independent survey” to determine the backwardness of the communities as such a survey had already been conducted.
In its advice to the Central Government at that time, the NCBC relied on the findings of the State Backward Classes Commission. While in the case of Devanga and Gangot communities, the NCBC advisory mentioned their number in the population, school dropout rate, income etc., for most other communities its advisory mentioned their backwardness without providing data for these socio-economic indicators.
Hearing the case in December 2024, the Supreme Court of India had sought quantitative data from the state government to show the backwardness of these communities, lack of representation in public employment and social and economic backwardness.
What next?
While the NCBC recommendation has been sent to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, no decision has been taken by the Central Government on how to proceed with the revision of the OBC lists.
Sources have said The Hindu That the NCBC under the chairmanship of Mr. Ahir has sent advice to the Ministry for inclusion and exclusion in the OBC list of eight other states.
But here, unlike 2014, the process now requires that any changes to the central OBC lists be brought through Parliament for notification by the President of India.
This is due to the Constitution (102nd) Amendment Act brought by the first Narendra Modi-led government in 2018, which gave constitutional status to the NCBC and specified the role of Parliament and the President in identifying socially and educationally backward classes. In 2014, the Law on Identification of OBCs gave the executive power to notify the lists based on the recommendation of the NCBC.
