For the last one year or so, the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), under the chairmanship of former Union Minister Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, has been focused on triggering a pruning of State OBC lists in a bid to re-evaluate the continued inclusion of communities that might have progressed due to years of accruing benefits.
This exercise has led the Commission to now question the “abundance” of Muslim communities in the OBC lists of States like Karnataka and West Bengal and in the latter’s case, it has also stalled requests to include around 80 castes/communities in the Central OBC list, questioning the validity of the reports relied upon by the State government.
Also read | Why and how Muslims were given quotas under OBC reservation in Karnataka
