View of the Supreme Court of India | Photo credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
New petitions in the Supreme Court seek to extend the creamy layer principle to SC/ST reservations based on a misinterpretation of the 2024 Davinder Singh judgment. The move revives a decades-old debate over whether income can serve as a proxy for caste disadvantage and whether social justice can be trapped in an economic test.
On March 10, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Center and all states on a Public Interest Litigation filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay to exclude the “creamy layer” from SC/ST reservations. A separate lawsuit, filed in February, sought an income-based preference mechanism under those quotas. Both petitions seek constitutional sanction from the same source: the decision of a seven-judge bench in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024).
Published – 30 April 2026 08:30 IST
