Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

As campaigning for west Bengal’s legislative assembly election scheduled for early 2026 heats up, prime minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah extensively toured the state in May severely criticising the ruling Trinamool Congress and chief minister Mamata Banerjee now in her third consecutive term in office. Among the failures of the TMC government, they listed continuous corruption in teacher recruitment, coal and cattle smuggling, ‘syndicate raj’ and extortion by TMC cadres. 

“Bengal has guided the entire nation — be it in knowledge, science, spirituality or the freedom struggle. But then came the rule of the communists. After that… she (Mamata) has turned this great land of Bengal into a hub of infiltration, corruption, atrocities on women, bomb blasts and injustices against Hindus,” said Amit Shah, addressing a massive rally in Kolkata, according to a Times of India report (June 2).

Meanwhile, following repeated scandals in teacher recruitment for West Bengal’s 84,000 government schools which culminated in the Supreme Court scrapping the appointment of 25,735 secondary and higher secondary school teachers on April 3, because “the entire recruitment process is irreparably tainted and invalid,” the TMC government’s latest bloomer in education is that it  has failed to resolve the issue of reservations for OBCs (Other Backward Classes/Castes) in government-run higher education institutions.

Last year a Centralised Admission Portal (WBCAP) was launched with great fanfare to streamline undergraduate admissions into 461 state government colleges and 16 universities. But this year, the portal is shut — paralysed by the government’s indecision on the issue of OBC reservations. This has delayed admissions in all government colleges and universities statewide. Trapped between administrative inertia and judicial uncertainty, lakhs of students are in the dark — confused, anxious, with no clarity on when the admission process will begin.

The back story of reservation for OBCs in government HEIs stretches back to 2012 when the first TMC government (fresh after ending 34 years of Communist rule in West Bengal) awarded OBC status to 77 mainly Muslim communities. As such they became entitled to reserved quotas in government colleges and universities and government employment. In 2014, the Kolkata high court invalidated the TMC government’s award of OBC status to these communities. The court held that the said communities had been granted OBC status on the grounds of religion which is not permitted by the Constitution and case law.

On appeal, in August 2020, the Supreme Court granted the state government opportunity to justify inclusion of 77 communities in the OBC category, reiterating that reservation on the basis of religion is prohibited by law. In March this year, the lackadaisical TMC government informed the apex court that it would complete a fresh assessment of the 77 communities within three months. Inevitably, this assessment has not been completed. Since then after higher secondary school-learning results were announced in May, undergrad college principals have been imploring education minister Bratya Basu to complete the assessment exercise, warning that delay will jeopardise the admission of school-leavers beyond July when the new academic year 2025-26 begins. Despite the urgency, the education ministry says it is still awaiting a response from the Advocate General for legal clarity. 

Meanwhile with the state government stalling the admission process in government higher ed institutions over the unresolved legal tangle on OBC reservations, public colleges and universities are losing ground to private and autonomous HEIs which have already started admitting students into undergard programmes. Vice Chancellors of the government-run Calcutta University and Rabindra Bharati University have expressed alarm, blaming the government for the admissions deadlock. They fear top-performing students will flee to private or out-of-state institutions, and Bengal will suffer an irreversible talent drain.

Within West Bengal’s academy there is widespread disillusionment that repeated shame and scandals in the education system has forced migration of their brightest minds to other states and/or has forced a huge number of children and youth into exploitative labour and women into premature, unlawful marriages. “This is not a mere administrative failure; it is a betrayal of an entire generation,” says the vice chancellor of a public university, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

For the education sector, the past 14 years since the TMC was led to power by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee amid great hope and expectations, has been a great let down. And with every passing day her star is dimming.

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