The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice on a petition challenging the Calcutta High Judgment which declared the OBC certificates issued between 2025-26 to be void.

A bench comprising Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana further ordered that the appointments will be subject to the result of the decision in the present matter. The bench further directed that this should be made clear in the appointment letters issued to the new recruits.

The bench passed the interim order after hearing Senior Advocate Shadan Farasat for the petitioners, who participated in the 2024 recruitment for Constables in the West Bengal Police. The bench also heard Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy in a connected matter. Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta appeared for the State.

Though Farasat urged that the posts be kept vacant in the interim, the bench refused, with Justice Bagchi saying that State recruitments cannot be halted. Farasat then urged that it be clarified that the appointments would be subject to the result of the petition.

The bench said that the petition will be heard along with the similar connected petitions.

The Special Leave Petition challenges the August 12, 2026 judgment of a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court in Shreyasi Dhang v. State of West Bengal (MAT 1320/2026). The petitioners were not parties to the proceedings before the High Court and have filed a separate application seeking permission to challenge the judgment.

The High Court declared the State's re-declaration of OBC classes in May and June 2025 void ab initio, and held that OBC certificates issued between May 8 and June 12, 2025 and during the period between June 10, 2025 and May 18, 2026 were of no consequence and void ab initio.

The controversy has its origins in the 2024 judgment of the High Court which had struck down the inclusion of 66 communities in the OBC list and ordered a fresh survey. The State, between May 2025 and June 2025, re-introduced several OBC classes. This year, after the new BJP Government came to power, the State withdrew its challenge in the Supreme Court against the High Court's judgment. The State also withdrew its challenge to the Calcutta High Court's June 2025 order, which had stayed the State's re-notification of certain OBC classes.

The High Court, in its August 2026 judgment, observed that with the State withdrawing its challenge, the initial High Court orders have revived.

"It is, therefore, found that all OBC certificates issued by the State between 8th May, 2025 and 12th June, 2025 and those certificates that were issued in the interregnum between 10th June, 2025 and 18th May, 2026 would also be all no consequence and void ab initio. Persons falling within the OBC category under the classes existing prior to 2010 would have to apply a fresh for certification as OBC, if they fall within the classes that have been saved by the judgment of Coordinate Bench dated 22nd May, 2024," the High Court order stated.

Petitioners' case

The petitioners contended that the High Court judgment resulted in their OBC certificates being treated as invalid and the OBC reservation in the recruitment being reduced from 17% to 7% at the stage of declaration of results.

The plea contends that the Calcutta High Court's May 22, 2024 judgment in Amal Chandra Das v. State of West Bengal, which struck down the inclusion of several OBC classes, came after the application window for the police recruitment had closed. The petitioners contend that the subsequent developments concerning the State's OBC list cannot retrospectively alter the terms under which they entered the recruitment.

The five petitioners say they had participated in almost the entire recruitment process between 2024 and 2026 as OBC-A or OBC-B candidates and that their certificates had been accepted throughout the process.

They contend that reservation applicable to a recruitment cannot be altered after candidates have applied and progressed through the selection process.

The petition relies on the Constitution Bench judgment in Tej Prakash Pathak v. Rajasthan High Court, which held that eligibility criteria notified at the commencement of a recruitment process cannot ordinarily be changed midway unless permitted by the applicable rules or advertisement, and that any permissible change must satisfy Article 14 and the requirement of non-arbitrariness.

According to the petition, the recruitment originally provided for 1,998 OBC posts out of 11,749 vacancies, amounting to 17% reservation. Of these, 1,175 posts were earmarked for OBC-A and 823 for OBC-B. The recruitment terms also provided a three-year relaxation in the upper age limit to OBC-A and OBC-B candidates.

The petitioners contend that three of them were above the upper age limit applicable to Unreserved candidates as on January 1, 2024 and were eligible to apply only because of the OBC age relaxation. Therefore, treating them retrospectively as Unreserved candidates would, in their case, effectively extinguish their candidature rather than merely reduce their chances of selection.

The application window had closed on April 5, 2024. The petitioners argue that they had consequently acquired a right to be considered in the categories under which their applications were accepted and against the vacancies advertised for those categories.

Another challenge is that the petitioners were not parties to the proceedings in Shreyasi Dhang. The plea argues that a case relating to the OBC certificate of an individual medical aspirant could not have resulted in the invalidation of certificates held by persons who were neither parties nor given an opportunity of hearing.

The petition has been filed through Advocate-on-Record Lavkesh Bhambhani.

Case : AKTARUL ISLAM AND ORS v. THE STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND ORS | Diary No. 50605-2026 and RIGHT AND JUSTICE FOUNDATION AND ANR. v. UNION OF INDIA Diary No. 41300-2026