By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net
The minorities of West Bengal, especially Muslims, are being deprived of the benefits of Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation categories both in Colleges-Universities admissions and state-run recruitment sectors even after having eligible candidates–as revealed by a recent Survey along with the experiences of Muslim candidates say so. This has led inevitable unrest and disappointment among community students and job applicants.
Muslims comprise a little over 27% of the total population of the state.
The CPI(M)-led West Bengal government at the fag end of their 34-year reign declared a 10% reservation for minorities under Other Backward Classes category for their overall socio-economic development in 2010. Later, the Mamata Banerjee government increased raised it to 17% when they came to power in Bengal, and divided the OBCs into two categories—OBC A, the more backward comprising 90% of Muslims under this category, and OBC B, the lesser backward consisting of other marginalised communities including Muslims but less in number. Now though OBC B reservation category is followed in many of educational and recruiting bodies, candidates under OBC A category are deprived in time of selection.
In a recent result published by West Bengal Public Service Commission for recruitment in the Audit and Accounts Service department, only two minority candidates from general category got selected for the said post. This post had 120 vacancies—66 unreserved, 26 for SC, 7 for ST, 11 for OBC A and 8 for OBC B. Out of 41 OBC A category listed candidates who were called for the interview, not a single candidate was selected from them though 16 OBC B listed candidates out of 30 who were called for the interview were selected for the said department.
Humayun Aziz, a resident of Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, who has appeared for interview for four times under OBC A Category but has been rejected every time, said, “On Thursday, we, the numerous deprived students met Mohammed Kamruzzaman , the State Secretary of All India Minority Youth Federation. We gave a deputation to the Chairman of West Bengal Minority Commission pleading him to probe why we are deprived of the benefits of OBC A category reservation policy. Since, SCs, STs and even OBC B are getting the privilege of this reservation policy, then why are we exempted? Is it because most of the Muslims come under this category?” he added that many more students like him are the victims of this deprivation.
The Chairman of the said Commission confirmed against the deputation. He said, “I will be starting my second tenure as the Chairman of the Commission from 24th July officially and after that we will be issuing a notice to the Public Service Commission authority asking them the reason for this discrimination.”
This picture resembles the situation of minority students’ admission in reputed colleges and universities of Bengal.
On 10th July, Monday, All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), prepared by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MoHRD), in its sixth presentation released a report on the enrollment of Muslim students in leading State and Central universities of West Bengal for the year 2015-16. The report says only 3% Muslim students got admission in the 2015-2016 sessions and therefore consisting of 10.16% out of total admission of all categories which comprise 92.47%, as is reported by the Survey. Many of the prestigious educational such as Presidency University, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Viswa Bharati University in Santiniketan, the West Bengal University of Teacher’s Training, Education Planning and Administration in Kolkata institutions failed to enroll a single Muslim student in the said academic year. Amity, a private university, also has no Muslims among the 1,140 students enrolled in it.
Even this year, there are nominal colleges and universities that have offered satisfactory reservation policy under OBC A category. For instance, Kolkata’s one of the best colleges, Bethune College, has offered only 1 seat for OBC A category out of 40 seats in various departments like English, Physics, Chemistry and Math which ought to be at least 5 seats against 10% reservation policy.
This figure is also true in case of normal colleges like Victoria Institution (College), Sammilani Mahavidyalaya, Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College where 1- 3 seats are reserved for OBC A out of 50 to 68 total seat distributions.
It’s not that eligible participation of Minority students are less. Every year 79% to 80% minority students pass their higher secondary examinations. But they have to go some other states like Aligarh Muslim University, U.P, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad Central University- both in Telangana, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi for pursuing their higher studies because of this deprivation.