Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board (WBJEEB) to immediately revise the merit list for the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE) 2025, finding that the list had been prepared in violation of its earlier directives on reservation.
The bench of Justice Kausik Chanda passed the order after receiving e-mails from Joint Entrance Test for Medical and Allied Sciences (PG) 2024 candidates alleging non-compliance with the court’s May 21 order, which had directed adherence to a previous Division Bench judgment dated May 22, 2024. That ruling had invalidated the OBC-A and OBC-B classifications introduced after 2010 and quashed related reservation quotas and certificates.
The May 21, 2025, order had specifically directed that admissions should only consider OBC candidates from 66 classes recognised prior to 2010, with 7 per cent reservation. The High Court noted that despite this, the WBJEEB issued a revised merit list on August 7 applying a new reservation policy effective from June 10, 2025, which had reintroduced OBC-A (10 per cent) and OBC-B (7 per cent) reservations based on fresh government notifications. The court held this act to be in direct breach of its orders. It also pointed out that the new policy could not have applied retrospectively since the WBJEE-2025 application process had concluded in February, and the examination was held in April—well before the new policy came into effect.
Although the Supreme Court on July 28 had temporarily stayed a June 17 Calcutta High Court order that had earlier stayed the new reservation policy, Justice Chanda clarified that this did not revive the cancelled OBC certificates issued after 2010. He noted that the WBJEEB had acted on these invalid certificates while preparing the merit list.
The court directed the WBJEEB to recast the merit list within 15 days in compliance with the original May 21 directive and ordered compliance affidavits from both the Board and the Higher Education Department.
It refrained from initiating contempt proceedings for now, citing pending appeals. The matter will be heard again in three weeks.