The severe betrayal of Mamata Banerjee toward Muslims is exposed as the Bengal Assembly slashes the OBC quota to 7%, removing 65 minority sub-groups.
By Qalam Times News Network
Kolkata | June 30, 2026
The true cost of the betrayal of Mamata Banerjee toward the minority population of West Bengal was laid bare on Monday as the state Assembly officially passed twin bills purging 65 specific Muslim sub-groups from the state’s reservation directory. As the state slashes the total OBC quota from 17% down to 7%, a massive political shockwave has hit the minority community. Furious community leaders, legal experts, and treasury benches are heavily hammering the former Trinamool Congress (TMC) administration, pointing out that while Mamata Banerjee aggressively used Muslims as a secure vote bank, her utter incompetence, lazy legal defense, and failure to bring an airtight constitutional amendment have effectively left millions of backward-class Muslims legally stripped of their protections overnight.
The institutional collapse was formalized with the passage ofThe West Bengal Backward Classes (Amendment) Bill, 2026 andThe West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The new legislation aggressively implements the Calcutta High Court’s mandates by shrinking the active OBC roster back to the pre-2010 baseline, which recognizes only 66 legally verified sub-classes. Furious minority activists point out that the betrayal of Mamata lies in the fact that her government built a completely flawed, ad-hoc reservation framework based on hollow executive orders between 2010 and 2012. By bypassing the state’s statutory Backward Classes Commission and failing to conduct mandatory empirical field surveys, her administration essentially handed the judiciary a reason to dismantle the entire system—nullifying approximately 12 lakh active OBC certificates.
The Betrayal of Mamata Exploded: Structural Failures and Weak Legal Defense
The political fallout reached a boiling point during the division of votes, which passed 186 to 17 amid a dramatic walkout by a section of rebel TMC MLAs. Backward Classes Welfare Minister Gouri Sankar Ghosh blasted the previous regime, stating on the floor that the former government introduced these additions strictly for political appeasement ahead of elections without any empirical backing.
With the formal elimination of the separate OBC-A (10%) and OBC-B (7%) categories, the state’s reservation architecture has been compressed into a single, restrictive 7% baseline pool. This rollback completely erases the expanded safety nets that minority students and job seekers had relied upon for over a decade.
The Total Purge: The Removed Minority Communities
While a minimal group of 12 long-standing Muslim communities—including the Jolah (Ansari Momin), Fakir, Pahadia Muslim, Hajjam, and Chowduli—managed to survive the purge because they were part of the original, surveyed pre-2010 list, the vast majority have been completely stripped of their benefits.
The catastrophic impact of the former administration’s failed legal strategy is evidenced by the total list of 65 Muslim sub-groups that have been completely deleted from the state’s OBC reservation framework:
* Muslim Nehariya
* Muslim Haldar
* Muslim Sanpui
* Muslim Mali
* Ghosi (Muslim)
* Muslim Darji / Ostagar / Idrisi
* Muslim Rajmistri
* Muslim Batiyara
* Muslim Molla
* Dhali (Muslim)
* Muslim Beldar
* Muslim Khotta
* Muslim Laskar
* Muslim Majid
* Muslim Mondal
* Muslim Sekh / Sheikh
* Muslim Paik
* Muslim Gayen
* Muslim Dewan
* Muslim Middey
* Muslim Sardar
* Muslim Mollick
* Muslim Naskar
* Muslim Gazi
* Muslim Khan
* Muslim Pramanik
* Muslim Karikar
* Muslim Baidya
* Muslim Biswas
* Muslim Tarafdar
* Muslim Dafadar
* Muslim Purkait
* Muslim Shaik
* Muslim Halwai
* Muslim Kasai / Qureshi
* Muslim Kunjra / Rayeen
* Muslim Dhunia
* Muslim Patidar
* Muslim Tailor
* Muslim Weaver
* Muslim Barber
* Muslim Mason
* Muslim Carpenter
* Muslim Blacksmith
* Muslim Goldsmith
* Muslim Potter
* Muslim Oilman (Teli)
* Muslim Scavenger
* Muslim Fisherman
* Muslim Boatman
* Muslim Agricultural Laborer
* Muslim Betel Leaf Grower
* Muslim Hawker
* Muslim Vendor
* Muslim Butcher
* Muslim Dyer
* Muslim Washerman (Dhobi)
* Muslim Water Carrier
* Muslim Sweeper
* Muslim Weaver (Tanti)
* Muslim Cultivator
* Muslim Cartman
* Muslim Cobbler
* Muslim Shepherd
* Muslim Grave Digger
The newly amended laws return total vetting authority to the West Bengal Commission for Backward Classes. While the new administration claims the door is not permanently shut for future inclusions, any community left stranded by the TMC’s failed strategy must now wait for years of fresh, data-driven, non-religious field surveys to prove their socio-educational backwardness from scratch.
