Supreme Court stands firm by March 11 judgment on assessing OBC creamy layer policy
Supreme Court stands firm by March 11 judgment on assessing OBC creamy layer policy
M.U.H
06/11/202618
The Supreme Court on Friday (November 6, 2026) stood firm by its March 11, 2026 judgment, which upheld the assessment of the OBC non-creamy layer status as per a 1993 Office Memorandum, which excluded parental salary income and agricultural income from the income/wealth test.
A Bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and R. Mahadevan did not agree with the government’s plea for a “reasonable time” of two years to undertake the necessary exercise of establishing equivalence of posts after consulting stakeholders and formulating an appropriate and uniform policy/mechanism for determination of OBC creamy layer status.
The court clarified that although the result of the Civil Service Examination 2025 was declared on March 6, 2026, the services had still not been allocated to the successful candidates. It said that since the process of allocation was pending, there would be no reasonable justification to defer the implementation of the March 11 judgment. It said the creamy layer principle, as interpreted in the judgment, would govern the allocation of services of OBC candidates selected through the Civil Service Examination 2025.
The judgment on Friday (November 6, 2026) highlighted the Department of Personnel and Training’s (DoPT) assurance, recorded in the March 2026 verdict, that it would create supernumerary posts to accommodate candidates, who are parties in the case and satisfy the non-creamy layer criteria, subject to their fulfilling all the eligibility conditions. The DoPT position had also been recorded in the 21st Report of the Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of Other Backward Classes.
Justice Mahadevan said the government may accordingly accommodate the candidates, who are parties before the apex court, provided they fulfil the requisite eligibility criteria. The court clarified that the judgment was applicable to the parties before it and would not be used to reopen appointments concluded prior to the verdict.
The government, in its application filed through Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati for a modification of the March 11 judgment, had said a retrospective implementation of the Supreme Court verdict would have significant consequences for recruitment, service allocation, cadre allocation, seniority, admissions and the administration of OBC reservation generally, affecting lakhs.
The court reiterated that individual claims pending before any court, tribunal, or other competent forum or authority should be considered on their own merits. The court expressed no opinion on the merits of such claims. The court extended the timeline for deciding these claims by eight weeks. On March 11, the court had given a six-month deadline.
The court said the Centre was at liberty to formulate its policy concerning reservation and the creamy layer criteria in accordance with the Constitution. It refused to prescribe any timeline for establishing equivalence between posts or consulting stakeholders in the formulation of the creamy layer policy, noting that these issues fell within the domain of the Executive and the Legislature.
Advocate Shashank Ratnoo, who appeared for the candidates, said the Supreme Court’s intervention has put an end to a decade-long injustice.
Senior advocate P. Wilson, who also represents the candidates, said the Centre had been merely trying to delay, even undo a final judgment of the apex court. He criticised that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had failed to comply with court directions, Parliamentary Committee recommendations, and its own 1993 rules.
Under the 1993 Office Memorandum, the government had devised a policy to exclude salary income and agricultural income of parents to calculate whether an OBC candidate belonged to the OBC creamy layer, that is, a high-income group excluded from reservation.
However, in 2004, the DoPT had issued a clarification counting in the salaries of parents working in Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), banks, or private companies, while ignoring the salaries of government employees in equivalent posts. This had led to wards of PSU employees getting disqualified for OBC reservation benefits after being included in the creamy layer bracket, unlike similarly placed children of government officers.
The Supreme Court, in the March judgment, had confirmed that treating PSU employees differently from government employees without proper job equivalence created a “hostile discrimination”.
The March 11 judgment had found that creamy layer exclusion was meant to be based on social status and not solely on total household salary. It had held that salary income cannot be mechanically added to deny PSU employees’ children the OBC quota by pushing them into the creamy layer.
