• WBJEE results, expected on August 7, stayed by Calcutta High Court over OBC list row
    Indian Express | 8 August 2025
  • The Calcutta High Court on Thursday stayed the declaration of results of the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE), which were scheduled to be announced today, August 7. The court objected to the publication of the merit list based on the state’s revised OBC categories.

    Justice Kaushik Chanda, who is hearing a contempt case against the state government and the WBJEE Board over an alleged violation of the court’s May order on the OBC quota, questioned the state on the impact of the Supreme Court’s stay on an earlier order: a Calcutta HC division bench had in June put an interim stay on the state’s notifications granting reservations to 140 sub-categories under OBC A and B until July 31.

    He ordered, “The WBJEE is to construct a fresh panel and publish with 7 percent reservation, according to the order of the division bench in May 2024. (This) shall be done within 15 days. The Chief Secretary should be notified to forward the order. The compliance report has to be submitted by someone not below the rank of Special Secretary.” The matter has been listed for three weeks later.

    During the hearing, the court verbally remarked: “The WBJEE shall not publish results on the basis of the merit list prepared by them including OBC A and B.”

    The court observed that the state’s actions regarding the WBJEE results list appeared to be in violation of the May 22, 2024 order cancelling 17 per cent reservation for OBCs and upholding 7 per cent. The single bench expressed concern over the publication of the revised OBC list, calling it a “complication” introduced by the state.

    Justice Chanda said: “Tell me, in the results you plan to publish, will OBC A or OBC B be included or not? 130 classes were cancelled. 66 were preserved. A judicial order cancelled the certificates. Does the SC authorise you to revalidate them? You had said you would examine the issue. I find that you have complicated the issue and notified everything. It is your interpretation that the SC order allows inclusion of both OBC A and B. If both are included, I will not allow the list to be published.”

    Senior advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay, appearing for WBJEE, told the court: “I am just intimating the court that JEE 2025 results were to be published today. I am just asking that the results be published today, but the admission procedure would not happen until further court orders. The SC had directed us to continue with the course of action and thus the notification was issued.”

    The court also asked the state to clarify how many caste certificates had been issued under the revised list. According to state records presented in court, a total of 1,151 certificates had been issued till yesterday, including 152 between June 12 and June 17, and 999 between August 1 and August 6.

    Commenting on the pace of processing, Justice Chanda remarked, “Everything done, all inspections were very active — one person applies and in seven days, a certificate is issued.”

    Advocate General Kishore Dutta informed the court that in May 2024, 113 OBC categories had been cancelled and 66 — those notified before 2010 — were preserved. Of these, 64 were reclassified in a new survey: 14 under OBC A and 50 under OBC B.

    The court’s intervention came after a group of empanelled WBJEE candidates wrote to the bench, alleging contempt by the state government and the WBJEE Board. The board was ready to release results for thousands of engineering aspirants following the Supreme Court stay on a Calcutta HC order that had stalled the implementation of a revised OBC list notified by the state.

    On Wednesday, the court had asked the principal secretary of the Higher Education Department to be present in court to explain the government’s position.

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