West Bengal’s decision to reduce OBC reservation from 17% to 7% has forced the School Service Commission to redraw the category-wise seat matrix for Group C and Group D recruitment in government-aided schools, prolonging an already disrupted hiring process and leaving candidates uncertain about results, appointments and income.
The total number of vacancies will remain unchanged, according to the report, but the distribution of those vacancies across general, OBC-A, OBC-B, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories will change. Seats earlier reserved for OBC-A are expected to be moved to the general or unreserved category. The revision is taking place after selection tests have already been conducted, making the reservation policy a direct administrative variable in an ongoing recruitment process rather than a condition settled before applications and examinations began.
The School Service Commission’s revised vacancy list will cover non-teaching positions at the secondary and higher secondary levels. A recruitment notification issued in September last year had listed 2,989 Group C vacancies and 5,489 Group D vacancies on the basis of the then-applicable 17% OBC reservation. The notification also provided subject-wise category details for general, OBC-A, OBC-B, SC and ST candidates.
The commission’s notice issued on September 21 said it was likely to receive a revised vacancy list and a fresh roster-based seat matrix following a government notification dated May 18. That notice came after the BJP government in Bengal announced 7% OBC reservation for 66 sub-groups, replacing the previous arrangement under which 17% reservation had been provided for 140 groups through the OBC-A and OBC-B categories.
The administrative sequence is important. Candidates were not waiting for a new recruitment exercise to begin; they had already taken the selection tests in early March. The tests were held before the model code of conduct came into effect in mid-March ahead of the May Assembly elections. The results, however, have not yet been published. The commission is now required to revise the vacancy structure before it can complete the next stage of the process.
This has created a gap between examination and appointment. Candidates who prepared for the tests under one category-wise vacancy arrangement must now wait for the government’s revised roster to be incorporated into the recruitment process. The overall number of posts is not expected to fall, but the category to which individual vacancies belong may change. For applicants, that distinction can determine eligibility for a particular seat and the probability of appointment.
The effects are especially significant for non-teaching staff who were among 8,445 employees whose appointments were terminated after the Supreme Court, on April 3, 2025, declared the recruitment process vitiated. The court required 3,500 non-teaching staff whom the commission had deemed untainted to participate in a fresh selection process if they wanted to retain their jobs.
Those candidates are therefore dealing with two linked uncertainties: the loss of their earlier employment and the delay in the process intended to determine whether they can return. Amit Mandal, identified in the report as one of the untainted candidates who took the selection test, said candidates had been without salaries since April last year. “We are struggling to survive. After the selection tests were held in March, we thought the results would be declared soon. But the new OBC rules have delayed the publication of the results. We are in deep trouble,” he said.
The distinction in the Supreme Court’s treatment of teachers and non-teaching staff has added to the pressure on the latter group. According to the report, 15,403 untainted teachers among those terminated will continue to receive salaries until May 31, 2027. The non-teaching staff do not have the same salary protection. That difference means that a delay in publishing results is not merely a procedural inconvenience for Group C and Group D candidates; it has a direct livelihood consequence for people who have already lost their previous earnings.
The OBC revision is also affecting the teacher recruitment process. The commission is recasting the panel of successful candidates in teacher selection tests to implement the 7% reservation. In the non-teaching recruitment, the results have not yet been published, with the commission first awaiting the revised vacancy list and roster.
The immediate institutional problem is the timing of the policy change. Reservation rules determine how vacancies are distributed before a recruitment process is completed. When the applicable quota changes after applications and examinations, the recruiting authority must reconcile the new policy with the earlier notification, the examination already conducted and the roster of posts. The commission’s task is therefore not only to announce a new percentage but also to translate that percentage into a legally and administratively workable seat matrix.
The process described in the report shows how a change in reservation policy travels through the machinery of public recruitment. First, the government changes the recognised OBC structure and the applicable quota. The commission then revises the vacancy list and asks candidates to edit their OBC sub-categories. After that, the category-wise roster must be recast before results and panels can be finalised. Each stage can affect the next one, particularly when the examinations have already been held under the earlier framework.
The government’s May 18 decision reduced the quota from 17% to 7% and narrowed the number of covered sub-groups from 140 to 66. The report says Muslim sub-groups are the main sufferers of the change. That makes the recruitment issue part of a broader question about how the state identifies eligible communities and applies reservation categories in public employment. The impact is not confined to a numerical adjustment: it changes which applicants are considered within the reserved categories and how seats are allocated among them.
The commission’s September notice indicates that the revised vacancy list is based on the new government notification and the corresponding roster. The notice does not signal a reduction in the total number of Group C and Group D vacancies. Instead, it points to a redistribution among categories. The administrative challenge is consequently concentrated in the classification and allocation of posts, while candidates remain unable to move to the result and appointment stages until that work is completed.
The recruitment figures illustrate the scale of the process. There are 8,478 Group C and Group D vacancies across the secondary and higher secondary levels based on the figures cited in the report: 2,989 Group C posts and 5,489 Group D posts. These are not isolated appointments but a large public recruitment exercise spread across government-aided schools. Any delay in finalising the vacancy matrix therefore affects a substantial pool of applicants and the staffing of schools that depend on non-teaching personnel.
The wider recruitment crisis began with the Supreme Court’s termination of 17,206 teaching jobs and 8,445 non-teaching jobs at the secondary and higher secondary levels. The fresh selection process was intended to separate candidates considered untainted from the earlier process and provide a route for some of them to retain employment. The current quota dispute has placed that remedial process on hold for non-teaching candidates and complicated the teacher panel as well.
This sequence raises a structural question about the management of recruitment after a court-directed reset. A fresh examination can create the appearance of a clean administrative starting point, but the process remains vulnerable to changes in the rules governing categories, eligibility and vacancy distribution. Where policy changes occur between notification, examination and result publication, candidates bear the uncertainty even when the total number of advertised posts remains the same.
It also shows why a vacancy number alone does not describe the real capacity of a public recruitment process. The 8,478 posts remain on paper, but their availability to different categories depends on the revised roster. For candidates, the relevant question is not only how many jobs exist but how those jobs are distributed, whether their category is recognised under the new framework and when the commission can publish a valid result.
The report does not provide a date for the revised vacancy list, the publication of the Group C and Group D results or the completion of appointments. It also does not establish how many seats will move from OBC-A to the general category in each subject or school group. Those details will determine the practical effect of the quota revision on individual candidates and cannot be inferred from the overall vacancy total.
For now, the confirmed position is that the commission is awaiting and processing a revised vacancy list under the 7% OBC reservation framework. The teacher panel is being recast, while the non-teaching results have not been published. The next decisive developments are the release of the fresh seat matrix, publication of the selection-test results and clarification of the timeline for appointments and salary-related relief for untainted non-teaching staff.
