Kolkata: After Trinamool Congress government recently informed the Supreme Court that it had started a fresh survey to identify Other Backward Classes in Bengal, Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday accused the West Bengal government of appeasement and intent of diverting funds from Hindu OBCs without proper scientific data to other communities.
Addressing a press conference, Adhikari said that conducting the survey started even before the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government had informed the apex court about their fresh survey.
“It is the appeasement politics of the state government. The survey started on March 10 and they informed the Supreme Court on March 18. Without thinking of the actual ways to uplift the status of people, they are just playing appeasement politics to a particular community. We will move the Calcutta High Court praying to make the National OBC Commission, Government of India and also Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) OBC wing to be a party to the case,” said Adhikari.
Taking further potshots at the TMC government Adhikari said, “When I say Muslim League 2 party is going on in West Bengal then Mamata Banerjee gets hurt. We are opposing one thing that when freshly 113 OBC classes are mentioned in the new list over there only 4 OBC classes of Hindu Muslims are mentioned there and the remaining 109 are from a particular community.”
Earlier this day, taking to X, the Leader of Opposition said, “The WB Govt brought the matter to the Hon’ble Supreme Court after the Hon’ble Calcutta High Court ordered the scrapping of all OBC Certificates issued in the state since 2010. Controversy erupted after 75 of the 77 Communities added in the OBC List of WB since 2010, were Muslims.
The Hon’ble Calcutta High Court scrapped the certificates, stressing that religion seemed to be the sole criterion, further adding that, selection of 77 classes of Muslims as backwards is an affront to the Muslim community as a whole.
Moreover, a class is declared as OBC not only because it is backward, based on scientific and identifiable data, but also on the basis of such class being inadequately represented in the services under the state.
Such inadequacy is required to be assessed vis-a-vis the population as a whole including other unreserved classes. The WB Govt landed in a soup when they were asked to explain the process, how it selected the 77 Communities in the State’s list for OBC reservations.” (Sic)
