West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that her government will challenge in higher court the Calcutta High Court order that cancelled all Other Backward Class certificates issued in the state after 2010, PTI reported.
“We do not accept the order that scrapped OBC certificates,” Banerjee was quoted as saying at a Lok Sabha elections rally in South 24 Parganas district. “We will contest at a higher court after summer vacation.”
On Wednesday, a division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha of the Calcutta High Court struck down Section 16 of the West Bengal Backward Classes (Other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) (Reservation of Vacancies in Services and Posts) Act, 2012, declaring Other Backward Classes certificates issued in West Bengal after 2010 as illegal.
Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress was in power in the state in 2012.
The bench, however, clarified that the judgement would not affect those who have already availed reservations using the caste certificates issued under the section.
Adding 77 groups of Muslims in the list of Other Backward Classes was to “treat them as a vote bank”, the court had said.
It also stated that the executive orders of the state government classifying 66 groups as Other Backward Classes before 2010 were not challenged in the petition and hence, were not interfered with.
The court directed the state’s Backward Classes Welfare Department to place a report, in consultation with the Backward Classes Commission, before the Legislature. The report is expected to include recommendations about the inclusion of new classes or for exclusion of remaining classes in the state Other Backward Classes list.
Banerjee had said on Wednesday that she would not accept the High Court’s judgement and the Other Backward Classes reservation will continue in the state as is.
“We had drafted the Bill after conducting a house-to-house survey, and it was passed by the Cabinet and the Assembly,” PTI had quoted her as saying at a poll rally in the Dum Dum parliamentary constituency.
She added: “The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] has conspired to stall it by using central agencies. How can the saffron party show such audacity?”
Eight constituencies in West Bengal will head for polling in the sixth phase of the general election on May 25 and nine in the final phase on June 1. The remaining 25 constituencies voted in earlier phases.
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