OBC Creamy Layer: Supreme Court Says March Ruling Won’t Reopen Past Appointments or Seniority
Clarifying its March 11 judgment on how OBC creamy-layer status is assessed, the Supreme Court said it binds the parties before it, will not unsettle seniority or promotions, and gave eight more weeks to comply.
The Supreme Court on Friday, 6 November, cleared the air on the reach of its March 11 judgment on the OBC “creamy layer”, after the Centre warned that applying it to past cases could upset years of government recruitment and college admissions.
What the Court said today
A bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice R. Mahadevan, ruling on a miscellaneous application filed by the Union government, clarified that:
- the March judgment applies to the parties who were before the Court;
- seniority and promotions already granted will not be reopened;
- other pending cases will be decided by the courts on their own facts and merits; and
- the time to comply with the judgment has been extended by eight weeks.
The March 11 ruling
In March, the Court held that whether an Other Backward Classes candidate falls in the creamy layer cannot be decided only on the basis of the parents’ salary income. The status and category of the post held by the parent or parents must also be considered. The case turned on how to read the Office Memorandum of 8 August 1993, which sets out the creamy-layer criteria, and a clarificatory letter of 14 October 2004.
Why the Centre went back to court
The Union government had asked that the judgment operate only for the future. It argued that applying a changed eligibility test to completed selections could unsettle appointments and admissions made by the Centre, 18 states and Union Territories, and create uncertainty over OBC non-creamy-layer status, seniority and career progression. It pointed out that lakhs of admissions to higher education institutions had been made since 2012 under the 1993 criteria.
The Centre had also asked for two years to work out how posts in other organisations compare with government posts, and for permission to finalise service allocation for 958 candidates recommended by the UPSC in the Civil Services Examination 2025 while the clarification was pending.
— Legal Desk
Featured image: Supreme Court of India, inside buildings — Pinakpani, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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