OBC cream layer income test issue stuck between ministries, says House panel chief

The issue regarding the two components of excluding the OBC cream — the income/wealth test and job equivalence — 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 head of the House Panel on OBC Welfare Ganesh Singh.

Ideally, he said, the social justice ministry should formulate a policy based on the Supreme Court’s reading of the income test in March and then submit it to the government. “That hasn’t happened yet,” Mr Singh said.

The judgment ruled that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) practiced “hostile discrimination” in applying the income test differently to OBC candidates with parents in civil service and OBC candidates with parents in jobs where equivalence with government posts was not established.

It noted that salary income was included for the latter category and directed the government to exclude salaries from the test and create supernumerary seats for OBC candidates who were denied non-creamy layer status on such application of the test.

While the government had six months to implement the guidelines, the issue created an uproar among OBC sections after the government approached the Supreme Court with pleas saying it was “extremely difficult” to retrospectively make a judicial interpretation of the income test. The government also argued that there must be cases where wage income must be included in the application of the income test.

Under the chairmanship of Mr. Singh, the committee consistently pointed out that the government was misapplying the income test to candidates of OBC parents in non-equivalent government posts, primarily by interpreting the 2004 DoPT letter.

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Singh said, “It seems that the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of Social Justice are handing over work. Ideally, the Ministry of Social Justice should have created a policy on job parity and application of the income test so that it can be submitted to the government. But that has not happened.”

The Cabinet Minister in charge of the Personnel Department is Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of Social Justice is headed by Virendra Singh. The committee headed by Mr. Singh is also advocating that the Ministry of Social Justice introduce parity of posts.

Most recently, the matter was taken up by the House panel on OBC welfare in hearings related to the implementation of the OBC reservation policy by the DoPT. In these hearings in 2025, the Ministry of Personnel said that the issue involved OBC candidates with parents in jobs where equivalence was not established. The Department of Personnel further stated in April 2025 that the Department of Social Justice was responsible for determining this equivalence, and in August of that year the Department said that the Department of Social Justice had been asked to respond to a House committee.

However, officials told The Hindu that the Ministry of Social Justice is yet to respond to the committee on the issue. In petitions filed in the Supreme Court earlier this month, the Center said that the mere determination of equivalence for all existing state PSUs could take up to two years and that it could take longer for private sector posts.

Asked about his opinion on the Supreme Court decision and the Centre’s arguments in its recent petitions, Mr Singh said: “Once the Supreme Court has decided on it, there is really no scope for my opinion.”

OBC candidates, who are directly affected by the outcome of the Rohith Nathan judgment on March 11, argued that the Centre’s current stand on the difficulty of conducting the entrance test correctly and retrospectively appears to be an evasive tactic.

One civil services candidate who was denied OBC-NCL status by the DoPT on an earlier reading of the entrance test told The Hindu, “The government is also creating fear by saying that the court’s decision would have to be applied retrospectively to all government recruitments and recruitments. It is not necessary and it is not what the court has ordered.”

The candidate explained that the issue of “unequal and arbitrary” application of the entrance test only arises in the DoPT. “There are candidates who are considered by UPSC to be part of the creamy layer one year, but are considered non-creamy layer the next year. There are candidates who were excluded as creamy layer by UPSC but were considered non-creamy layer in other government recruitments,” the candidate said, adding that it was a problem with the way the DoPT reads and applies the entrance test.

In a clarification sought by the Centre, the DoPT asked whether the March 11 judgment should require retrospective application of the income test for all government recruitments and recruitments, implying that it would appear so according to the government’s understanding. Another OBC candidate asked, “Why did the government not mention any of these issues in the 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 appeals to the Supreme Court became public. It said that for the PMO and DoPT to resolve this issue of equivalence and application of the income test after the Supreme Court’s decision, it is “a matter of just a day”. AIOBCSA said, “What is lacking is not time or administrative capacity, but political will and commitment to address the genuine concerns of OBCs”.

Published – 28 Aug 2026 21:14 IST