Apex court lifts HC stay on West Bengal OBC list
Mamata Banerjee government
, the Supreme Court on Monday lifted the Calcutta HC stay on implementation of the new list of OBC sub-groups, including 80 belonging to the Muslim community, and said it is well settled that the Executive can notify such a list without passing a legislation.
On June 17, the HC had stayed the new OBC List entitling to quota benefits 140 sub-groups under OBC-A and OBC-B categories. The earlier list, which was struck down by HC, had 113 OBC sub-groups, with 77 from the Muslim community and 36 from others. The appeal of the Bengal govt challenging the quashing of the earlier list is still pending before the SC.
Appearing for the state, senior advocate Kapil Sibal said the stay has put the govt in a piquant position as it faces the task of recruiting 40,000 teachers and preparing a roster.
A bench of Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justices K Vinod Chandran and N V Najaria said, "Prima facie the HC order is erroneous. A 9-judge constitution bench of the SC has settled the law and ruled that List of sub-groups for availing quota can be notified by the Executive without a legislation".
On a petition by one Amal Chandra Das challenging the new OBC list, an HC bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha had on June 17 directed that executive notifications issued between May 8 and June 13 about OBC categories will not go into effect till July 31.
The SC bench said: "How the HC stay the notification without giving reasons? It is in the teeth of a constitution bench judgment of the SC. If you all agree, we can request the HC chief justice to assign the matter to a special bench, other than the judges who heard the matter, and decide the issue on merits".
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocates Ranjit Kumar and Guru Krishna Kumar said the HC has not imposed any stay on the implementation of OBC reservations based on the list existing prior to 2010, which had 66 sub-groups.
"It is the state which has enacted legislation laying down the procedure for inclusion and exclusion of sub-groups from OBC List. Once the procedure is laid down in law, it must be followed scrupulously, which the govt didn't, thus, inviting a stay from the HC," they said. "The state law mandates that the State Backward Class Commission is to be consulted, which was not done by the state. No survey was undertaken to identify the sub-groups which should be included.
What they did was to reintroduce the list of sub-groups whose inclusion was quashed by the HC earlier," they held.
Sibal, on the other hand, said a survey was done and 76 new sub-groups were added to the earlier list. The petitioner had not challenged the survey done for this purpose, he said.
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