OBC creamy-layer criteria: Supreme Court to set up special Bench to hear Centre’s plea

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The issue is related to the March 11 judgement of the Supreme Court of India (Rohith Nathan case) on a batch of petitions filed by OBC candidates of the civil service examinations, who were excluded as being part of the creamy layer on account of the salaries of their parents. | Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 25, 2026) agreed to consider setting up a special Bench to hear Centre’s plea seeking clarification on the applicability of its March 11 judgment on OBC creamy-layer criteria to candidates of the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2025.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) seeks directions allowing the government to proceed with service allocation of the 958 candidates recommended by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for CSE-2025 on the basis of the OBC creamy-layer determination applied before the March 11 verdict.

Retrospectively implementing the Supreme Court ’s March 11 judgment in Union of India v. Rohith Nathan on the income/wealth test for determining OBC Creamy Layer status would be “extremely difficult” and will cause a “cascading effect” on settled service matters from 2012 onwards, which will extend its impact to “all categories, including the Unreserved category,” the Union government has informed the Supreme Court of India in a batch of applications.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has argued that retrospective implementation of the judgment could trigger a barrage of claims or contestations from candidates who were denied OBC Non-Creamy Layer status, as well as from those who did not seek such certification at the time of recruitments, examinations, admissions and other selection processes, but may now seek to rely on the judgment.

The “cascading effect” of implementing the decision, the Centre argued, would “drastically” alter the seniority landscape, potentially “begetting resentment” among officers who have gained seniority through experience and performance.

The Supreme Court’s March 11 judgment laid down the law on how to interpret the component of income/wealth test, under the government’s creamy layer exclusion framework for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), for the purposes of reservations in public education and employment. The Court specifically considered how the income test should be understood in the case of candidates whose parents are employed in posts for which no equivalence with posts in government service has been established.

The court noted that the income test was being applied in a way that was creating “hostile discrimination” between the children of those in government service and those in PSUs or private employment. In the absence of an established equivalence between the relevant posts, the income test, including salary income, was being applied to rule out OBC candidates of parents employed outside government service, while OBC candidates of parents employed in government service were being subjected to a test that did not include parental salary component.