The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board to scrap its merit list and prepare a fresh one based solely on the OBC categories recognised before 2010. The court observed that the merit panel had been prepared by flouting an earlier court order and was therefore invalid.
Justice Kaushik Chanda, while hearing the matter, ordered that the new merit list must be drawn up using the list of 66 OBC communities as identified prior to 2010. The board has been given 15 days to implement the directive and a further three weeks to file an affidavit of compliance through an officer of the rank of senior special secretary. The order is also to be communicated to the Chief Secretary of the state.
The merit list was originally scheduled to be published on August 7. However, following the High Court’s direction, the result declaration has now been thrown into uncertainty.
The court said that reservation for OBC candidates will remain capped at 7 per cent and will be limited to the communities recognised as OBCs before 2010. It ruled that the merit list, if published, must adhere strictly to these criteria.
In April 2023, the High Court had set aside all OBC certificates issued in West Bengal under categories introduced after 2010. A total of 42 communities were added in 2010 by the then Left Front government, followed by another 35 in 2012 during the tenure of the Trinamool Congress government. The court had held that these additions were made without following due procedure and hence could not be considered valid.
Justice Chanda also expressed concern over the haste with which new OBC certificates were issued in the days following a recent interim stay granted by the Supreme Court on the High Court’s earlier judgment. He questioned how applications, scrutiny, and issuance of such certificates could be completed within a short span, suggesting that the process lacked transparency and due diligence.
The court observed that the earlier judgment of the High Court had not been complied with before the Supreme Court’s stay order came into force, thereby amounting to a violation of judicial orders.
The High Court’s latest ruling has put thousands of aspirants awaiting admission to engineering and pharmacy courses in limbo, as uncertainty continues over the publication of the WBJEE results.
There was no immediate response from the West Bengal education department or the Joint Entrance Board regarding the court’s directions.
