Supreme court delivers major ruling on OBC creamy layer; salary alone cannot determine status

New Delhi (The Uttam Hindu): The Supreme Court has delivered a significant judgment introducing an important change in determining the Other Backward Classes (OBC) Non-Creamy Layer (NCL). In its ruling on March 11, the court clarified that creamy layer status cannot be decided solely on the basis of parents’ salary or income. Instead, the position of employment and other factors mentioned in the original 1993 guidelines must also be considered.

The Supreme Court stated that if parents are employed in government jobs under Group C or Group D (Class III or IV), their salary will not be counted while determining creamy layer status. Income earned from agriculture will also be completely excluded. For the purpose of determining the creamy layer, only the family’s income from “other sources” such as business, property, rent, and similar earnings will be considered, and the average annual income from these sources must remain below ₹8 lakh over three consecutive years.

In the ruling, the court also declared invalid Paragraph 9 of a 2004 letter issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which had stated that salaries of employees in banks, the private sector, or public sector undertakings (PSUs) should be included in the creamy layer calculation. The court termed this approach discriminatory and observed that children of government employees and those of private or PSU employees cannot be treated differently. Until equivalence between PSU or private sector posts and government Group III or IV positions is clearly established, only the original 1993 Office Memorandum (OM) guidelines will apply.