Supreme Court Reserves Order on Centre's OBC Creamy Layer Plea

Gist The Supreme Court has reserved its order on a Union government plea seeking the prospective application of a judgment that redefines how the Other Backward Classes OBC creamy layer is calculated. The original judgment struck down a discriminatory 2004 rule that disadvantaged the wards of Public Sector Undertaking PSU employees compared to government employees. For a civil services aspirant, this development highlights the friction between judicial corrections of discriminatory policies and the massive administrative chaos that retrospective implementation would trigger across a decade of nationwide recruitments. Background Under a 1993 Office Memorandum OM , the government established a policy to determine the OBC creamy layer a high-income group excluded from reservation benefits . Crucially, this 1993 OM excluded parental salary income and agricultural income from the wealth and income test used to determine creamy layer status. In 2004 , the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT issued a clarification that created a disparity: it counted the salaries of parents working in PSUs, banks, and private companies towards the income limit, while continuing to ignore the salaries of government employees…