OBC Creamy Layer and the Salary Income Test

Gist The Supreme Court recently directed the Union government to stop using salary income to determine the OBC creamy layer for candidates whose parents work in public sector undertakings or the private sector. The Centre has now approached the Court seeking clarification, citing that retrospectively implementing this directive would severely disrupt civil service allocations settled since 2012 . Aspirants must follow this issue as it highlights a fundamental debate over how reservation eligibility is calculated and demonstrates the administrative friction involved in executing retrospective judicial mandates. Background The concept of the "creamy layer" emerged from the 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment , which mandated excluding socially and economically advanced individuals from OBC reservation benefits. To implement this, the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT issued an Office Memorandum OM in September 1993 , laying down exclusion criteria based on parents' status such as holding constitutional posts or senior government ranks and a residual income/wealth test. Crucially, the 1993 OM specified that income from salaries and agricultural land must be excluded when calculating the income threshold which currently stands at ₹8 lakh…