4 days ago
'One-Sided Beneficiary Classes': BJP Takes On Mamata Govt Over OBC List In Bengal, TMC Hits Back
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The TMC hit back at the BJP to "stop misleading the people" and said the party's "only agenda" was "divide and rule" with an eye on the 2026 assembly elections
A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said backwardness is the only benchmark to decide OBC status, the ruling TMC and opposition BJP exchanged barbs over the inclusion of beneficiaries under the category.
The BJP, in a detailed post on social media, accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) of 'appeasement politics". It said for the Bengal government, OBC expanded to 'One-Sided Beneficiary Classes" and not Other Backward Classes.
The TMC hit back at the BJP's claims about the new list and to 'stop misleading the people with your lies". It said the saffron party's 'only agenda" is 'divide and rule" with an eye on the assembly elections in 2026.
On Tuesday (June 10), Mamata Banerjee told the state assembly that there is no connection with religion in deciding the inclusion of any person in the OBC category. She said the only benchmark to decide this in the state is backwardness and a commission set up by the state government is holding a survey on 50 new subsections for inclusion in that category.
Banerjee addressed the House after laying the annual report of the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes for the financial year 2024-25.
WHAT DID THE BJP SAY?
In a post on social media, opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari claimed to 'fact check" Banerjee's speech on the floor of the state assembly.
He said this was 'peak appeasement politics" by the state government. 'OBC = Other Backward Classes. In West Bengal it means One-Sided Beneficiary Classes," he said in a post on X.
Adhikari alleged that the reservation list is prepared with the intention of providing 'exclusively to Muslims" and 'deliberately depriving" Hindus and other religious communities.
He said the government has increased the reservation for OBCs in state services and posts to 17 per cent, including 10 per cent reservation for 'more backward' and 7 per cent for 'backward' classes categories. Before this, he added, a 7 per cent reservation had been in place since 1997.
'Now, who are going to reap the benefits of the increased reservation for the OBCs? Muslims, as simple as that," he wrote.
OBC = Other Backward Classes In West Bengal it means One-Sided Beneficiary Banerjee, said yesterday on the floor of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly that OBC List not prepared on the basis of Fact Check her claim. Just look at the Peak of… — Suvendu Adhikari (@SuvenduWB) June 11, 2025
The BJP leader said in December 2024, the Supreme Court had observed reservation must not be based on religion. This was while it was hearing an appeal filed by the West Bengal government against the Calcutta High Court judgment striking down its policy to include several castes, largely Muslim communities, in the state's OBC list.
