The Calcutta High Court dismissed two writ petitions by SLST 2025 candidates who belonged to the OBC-A category and sought reservation benefits during teacher recruitment. The court held that since the OBC-A caste categories had already been judicially struck down before the recruitment process began, the candidates could not claim reserved-category status. The ruling reinforces the principle that a void classification confers no enforceable rights on aspirants, even those who previously held OBC-A certificates.

This ruling sits at the intersection of Article 14 (equality before law), Article 16(4) (reservation in public employment), and the judicial doctrine that a classification struck down by a court becomes void ab initio — as if it never existed.

Background: The West Bengal government had created OBC-A and OBC-B sub-categories within the Other Backward Classes for reservation purposes. The Calcutta High Court had earlier struck down these sub-classifications as constitutionally invalid, holding they lacked adequate empirical backing and violated the equality guarantee of Article 14. That earlier judgment was not stayed, meaning its effect operated immediately.

The core legal principle tested here is 'void ab initio': when a court declares a statutory or executive classification unconstitutional, it is treated as never having had legal force. A candidate holding a certificate issued under a void category therefore holds nothing more than a piece of paper — no enforceable right to reservation flows from it.

A secondary principle is the 'crystallisation of rights' doctrine: rights in a recruitment process crystallise based on the law as it stands on the relevant date (advertisement, application, or appointment, depending on context). Since the OBC-A category was already void before SLST 2025 commenced, no right could crystallise in favour of these candidates.

For Article 16(4), the State's power to make reservations is conditional: the beneficiary class must be constitutionally valid. If the class is struck down, the reservation machinery has no object to operate on. This is not a new position — it echoes the Supreme Court's reasoning in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) and subsequent OBC-related rulings that treat the validity of the underlying classification as a threshold condition.