The Supreme Court’s recent order clarifying an earlier verdict on the role of parental income in reservation for the Other Backward Classes should come as a reprieve to the Union government. The Centre had moved the court seeking clarity on whether its March 11 order would apply retroactively, potentially unsettling two decades of recruitment and promotions.
The issue concerns the conflict between a 1993 Office Memorandum and a 2004 letter that altered its terms. In the former, children of parents in certain government jobs were excluded from the ‘creamy layer’ category in OBC reservations. Similarly, children of parents in public and private companies were to be assessed on an income-wealth test that did not include parental salaries or agricultural wealth—that is, until the government framed equivalence to government posts.
The operating principle was that as caste is also a matter of backwardness, social status must be accounted for in deciding the creamy layer to exclude it from reservation benefits. However, the 2004 letter said that parents’ salaries would determine creamy layer status. Aggrieved candidates approached the courts and received favourable orders from the Central Administrative Tribunal and high courts. On appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed that the 2004 letter amounted to hostile discrimination by holding the children of parents in non-government jobs to a different standard. Essentially, it held that caste is not a matter of economic backwardness and cannot be judged as such.
The Centre has, unfortunately, compounded the injustice by appealing cases that have dragged on for nearly a decade. The court granted relief to those involved and ordered the government to consider their recruitment within six months. Later, the top court allowed the Centre two more months to fulfil its orders, clarifying that it could not be a ground to upend existing recruitments and promotions.
However, it said the order would not apply to civil service hires before its March 11, 2026 verdict. This would be a relief to OBC candidates. Although the Supreme Court avoided providing a timeframe for establishing the equivalence of posts, it is a task that the Union government has put off for three decades. The latest order should spur it to undertake and complete it at the earliest.