The Mamata Banerjee government informed the Supreme Court Tuesday that a fresh exercise on identifying backward classes in Bengal will be undertaken and completed within July.

“It has been decided that a fresh exercise will be done as to who are backward. That will be over in three months. This may therefore be taken up after 3 months,” Kapil Sibal, counsel for the Mamata Banerjee government, informed the bench of Justices BR Gavai and AG Masih.

The Mamata Banerjee government had challenged a Calcutta high court verdict from last year that revoked the OBC status of 77 Muslim communities, which were included in the OBC category since 2010.

The division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar had last May called the classification process “illegal.”

“If entire exercise is redone, and after that, fresh reservation is provided for, and nobody is aggrieved, then this question will become irrelevant,” observed Justice Gavai. “They can’t have an objection to this. Let it come up in July.”

The state government started the exercise earlier this month.

“This court is of the view that the selection of 77 classes of Muslims as Backward is an affront to the Muslim community as a whole. This Court’s mind is not free from doubt that the said community has been treated as a commodity for political ends. This is clear from the chain of events that led to the classification of the 77 classes as OBCs and their inclusion to be treated as a vote bank,” the Calcutta high court division bench had stated in its order.