Pause in Bengal admissions, hirings after Calcutta high court OBC order
Times of India | 8 August 2025
KOLKATA: A question mark hangs over all recruitments and admissions in the state after a Calcutta High Court directive to West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board to recast the merit list for medical and allied sciences postgraduate admissions.
The court - after passing its order on Thursday in respect to these specific courses - directed that its order be forwarded to "all departments of the state for guidance in respect of all ongoing and upcoming recruitment and admission processes". This directive came in the last paragraph of Justice Kausik Chanda's 12-page order, prompting the state to apprehend a cascading effect on several other critical admissions and move a division bench.
The division bench declined to interfere as the state's appeal on the new reservation policy was pending before the Supreme Court.
The HC order, asking the WBJEE to "recast and publish" the merit list within 15 days, directed the agency to consider 7% reservation for 66 OBC categories only recognised by the West Bengal Backward Classes Department prior to 2010. Justice Chanda wondered how the new reservation policy effective from June 10 this year could be considered for an examination held on April 27. "It is wholly beyond com-prehension.... It can, at best, have prospective effect even assuming that the policy is eventually upheld or allowed to operate," he observed, saying the application of the new reservation policy was "clearly erroneous and unsustainable" and was in "clear violation" of the court's May 21 order.
HC: SC order doesn't revive OBC-A, B certs The court directed the WBJEE registrar and a senior higher education department officer to file a compliance report on the next hearing date and then asked that the order be communicated to the state chief secretary who should inform "all departments".
Justice Chanda held that the SC's July 18 order did not "revive or validate the OBC-A and OBC-B certificates that were cancelled by the Calcutta HC division bench on May 22, 2024".
State counsel Sirsanya Bandyopadhyay moved the division bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Mitra but it declined to interfere.
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