Summary
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has assured the Kurmi community that they will be kept outside the ambit of the proposed Uniform Civil Code, alongside a promise to push for Scheduled Tribe status and Eighth Schedule recognition for the Kurmali language.
The Kurmis, currently classified as OBC, have long agitated for ST status through road and rail blockades in West Bengal's Jangalmahal region. The UCC exemption promise, however, arrives well before the community's ST status has been formally granted by the Centre.
WHY IN NEWS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
Addressing a Karam festival gathering in Purulia, West Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari announced that the Kurmi community would be exempted from the state's proposed Uniform Civil Code, that protest-related cases against Kurmi community members would be withdrawn and that the government would push for constitutional recognition of the Kurmali and Rajbanshi languages.
The state has also said it will submit a "Further Common Justification Report" to the Centre supporting the Kurmis' long-pending demand for Scheduled Tribe status. A UCC drafting committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai has already been set up and the government says it has committed to keeping STs outside the UCC's scope.
Standard News
THE EXEMPTION IS ARRIVING BEFORE THE STATUS IT'S SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW A
Uniform Civil Code exemption for a community's customary law is, by constitutional design, a consequence of Scheduled Tribe recognition - not a substitute for it and not something offered in advance to make ST recognition feel closer than it actually is. That is exactly the sequence West Bengal has just inverted for the Kurmi community: promising them protection from the UCC while their actual ST application still sits, unresolved, at the Centre.
The Rule As Written Article 342
gives Parliament, acting through a Presidential notification after consultation with the state government, the sole power to declare a community a Scheduled Tribe. UCC exemptions for tribal customary law - the kind Uttarakhand built into its 2024 UCC Act - exist to protect communities the Constitution has already formally recognised as tribal.
The exemption is the protective shell around a status; it is not a status of its own and it cannot legally attach to a community until that community actually holds the ST tag.
The Rule As Practiced West
Bengal has promised the UCC exemption now, in 2026, while the Kurmis remain classified as OBC and their ST case is still working through the Centre's justification-report process - the same bureaucratic pathway that has moved slowly for decades.
In effect, the state government is granting the benefit of ST recognition before delivering the fact of it. This is politically potent - it lets the Kurmi community feel their identity claim has been validated without the state having to wait for or even necessarily deliver, actual Central recognition.
But it also quietly treats a constitutional classification as something a state government can front-load through a speech at a cultural festival, when it is in fact a power reserved exclusively to Parliament.
Why the Sequence Matters If a
UCC exemption can be promised ahead of ST status, the exemption stops functioning as a genuine constitutional safeguard and starts functioning as a political inducement - a way to keep an agitating community patient without resolving the underlying classification dispute that caused the agitation in the first place.
It also creates an odd precedent: what legal basis would the state actually rely on to exempt a non-ST community from a code it is simultaneously building for everyone else? The promise may be sincere, but its constitutional footing does not yet exist.
For a UPSC aspirant, the real lesson is not "the Kurmis want ST status"
- that much is obvious from any headline. It is recognising the precise moment a state government substitutes a political gesture for a pending constitutional process and being able to say exactly which provision that gesture is getting ahead of.
Quick Facts
Key numbers & takeaways — revise these first
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The Kurmi community is currently classified as Other Backward Class in West Bengal.
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The Kurmis are concentrated in the Jangalmahal region, spanning Purulia, Jhargram, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur.
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They were classified as a tribe in British-era censuses before 1931 but were excluded from the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950.
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The community has organised major road and rail blockades, including at Khemasuli and Kustaur stations, demanding ST status.
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They also seek inclusion of the Kurmali language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
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West Bengal's UCC drafting committee is headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai.
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ST status determination is a Central government process requiring a state Justification Report followed by Central and Parliamentary approval.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
The precise constitutional provision (Article 342) that makes ST classification a Parliament-only power and why a state promise cannot legally substitute for it
Why offering the UCC exemption benefit before the ST status itself risks becoming a political placeholder rather than genuine recognition
The full multi-institution pipeline (Justification Report, RGI, NCST, Parliament) that actually determines ST status and where the Kurmi case currently sits in it
What legal basis, if any, could support exempting a non-ST community from a state UCC - and why this creates a precedent problem
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