The issue concerning the two components of OBC creamy layer exclusion — income/wealth test and equivalence of posts — appears to be stuck between the Ministry of Personnel, Pensions, and Public Grievances and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, said BJP MP and chief of the House panel on welfare of OBCs Ganesh Singh.
He said ideally the Social Justice Ministry should formulate the policy based on the Supreme Court’s reading of the income test in March and then bring it to the Cabinet. “That has not happened yet,” Mr. Singh said.
The judgment had ruled that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) was practising “hostile discrimination” in applying the income test differently to OBC candidates with parents in government service and OBC candidates with parents in jobs where the equivalence with government posts had not been established.
It noted that for the latter category, income from salaries was being included and directed the government to exclude salaries from the test, and create supernumerary posts for OBC candidates who were denied non-creamy layer status based on such an application of the test.
While the government had six months to implement the directions, the issue caused a furore among sections of OBCs after the government approached the Supreme Court with applications saying it was “extremely difficult” to implement the court’s reading of the income test retrospectively. The government also argued that there must be cases where income from salaries must be included in applying the income test.
Under Mr. Singh’s leadership, the committee has consistently pointed out that the government was incorrectly applying the income test to OBC candidates of parents in jobs without equivalence with government posts, principally by interpreting a 2004 DoPT letter.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Singh said, “The Personnel Ministry and the Social Justice Ministry seem to be passing the job along to each other. Ideally, the Social Justice Ministry should have formed the policy on equivalence of posts and application of the income test so that it can be placed before the Cabinet. But that has not happened.”
The Cabinet Minister in charge of the Personnel Ministry is Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Social Justice Ministry is headed by Virendra Singh. The committee, under Mr. Singh, has also been pushing for the Social Justice Ministry to establish equivalence between posts.
The last time the House panel on OBC welfare was seized of the matter was in hearings related to the DoPT’s implementation of the reservation policy for OBCs. In these hearings in 2025, the Ministry of Personnel had said that the issue was related to OBC candidates with parents in jobs where equivalence had not been established. The Personnel Ministry further said in April, 2025 that it was the Social Justice Ministry that was responsible for establishing this equivalence, and in August that year, the Ministry said the Social Justice Ministry had been asked to respond to the House Committee.
However, officials told The Hindu that the Social Justice Ministry has yet to respond to the committee on this issue. In the applications submitted to the Supreme Court earlier this month, the Centre has said that establishing equivalence for all existing State PSUs itself could take up to two years and that it may take more time to do this for posts in the private sector.
Asked for his opinion on the Supreme Court’s ruling and the Centre’s arguments in its recent applications, Mr. Singh said, “There is no room for my opinion really, once the Supreme Court has ruled on it.”
OBC candidates who are directly affected by the outcome of the March 11 Rohith Nathan judgment have argued that the Centre’s current position on the difficulty of implementing the income test correctly and retrospectively seems like an evasive tactic.
One civil services candidate who was denied OBC-NCL status by the DoPT on the older reading of the income test told The Hindu, “The government is also fear-mongering by saying that the court’s ruling would have to be applied retrospectively to all government recruitment and admissions. There is no need to do this, and that is not what the court has directed either.”
The candidate explained that the issue of “unequal and arbitrary” application of the income test was only being seen in the DoPT. “There are candidates who are considered part of the creamy layer for one year by the UPSC, but in another year, they are considered as non-creamy layer. There are candidates who have been excluded by UPSC as creamy layer but have been considered as non-creamy layer in other government recruitments,” the candidate said, adding that this was a problem with how the DoPT reads and applies the income test.
In the clarification sought by the Centre, the DoPT has asked if the March 11 judgment is meant to call for the retrospective application of the income test for all government recruitment and admissions, alluding that it would appear so in the government’s understanding of it. Another OBC candidate asked, “Why did the government not mention any of these issues in House committee hearings, in the Supreme Court when the cases were being heard?”
The All India OBC Students Association also issued a statement after the Centre’s applications to the Supreme Court became public. It said that for the PMO and the DoPT, resolving this issue of equivalence and application of the income test after the Supreme Court ruling “is a matter of just one day”. The AIOBCSA said, “What is missing is not the time or the administrative capacity but the political will and commitment to address the genuine concerns of the OBCs”.
Published – August 28, 2026 09:14 pm IST
