OBC creamy layer exclusion: Supreme Court rejects parent salary-only test in Rohith Nathan (2026)

The news

The Supreme Court in March 2026 ruled that the government cannot rely solely on a parent's salary to exclude an OBC candidate from reservation benefits under the creamy layer rules. The judgment, delivered in Rohith Nathan (2026), corrected an inconsistency in a 2004 'clarification' issued by the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) that had been used since around 2015 to deny dozens of OBC candidates who had cleared the Civil Services Examination their reservation benefits. The Court held that salary alone is not sufficient evidence of social advancement.

The creamy layer concept was upheld in the landmark Indra Sawhney (1992) judgment, which mandated 27% OBC reservation in central government services but required exclusion of economically advanced sections. Following equivalence guidelines issued in 1993, the DoPT's 2004 clarification was used to deny benefits to OBC candidates whose parents' salaries exceeded the official threshold due to pay revisions that did not always reflect changes in occupational status. The Cabinet approved equivalence guidelines in 2017, but a parliamentary committee criticised them. After the Rohith Nathan ruling, the government stalled service allocations following the 2025 examination and appealed, arguing that retrospective application would create administrative chaos. On November 6, the Court clarified that it had not asked the government to reopen completed selections, as that could set workers against one another, but said the government must create supernumerary posts for legitimate claimants and apply the 1993 rules to pending allocations. According to the 2024-25 DoPT Annual Report, OBC representation in central government employment stood at 26.3% but declined steadily towards higher positions.

What is the creamy layer and how was it meant to work?

The creamy layer concept was introduced by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney (1992) judgment, which upheld 27% OBC reservation in central government services but mandated the exclusion of economically advanced sections among OBCs. In 1993, the government issued equivalence guidelines to identify such candidates. The idea was that reservation benefits should go to those who genuinely need them, and that families that have advanced economically no longer require affirmative action. The DoPT's 2004 'clarification' deviated from this by using a parent's salary alone as the test, ignoring whether the salary reflected genuine occupational or social advancement.

What has the Rohith Nathan judgment achieved and what remains unresolved?

The Rohith Nathan (2026) judgment corrected the inconsistency by ruling that salary alone cannot determine creamy layer status, restoring the principle that social advancement must be assessed holistically. However, the Court did not require reopening of completed selections, leaving government misapplication unaddressed for past cases. The government must now create supernumerary posts for legitimate claimants and apply the 1993 rules to pending allocations, but the editorial notes that these remedies should not be available only to those who can afford litigation. The Justice G. Rohini Commission, which submitted its report on sub-categorisation of OBCs in 2023, remains unpublished, and the editorial argues that policymakers need data on each caste's education, occupations, assets, and landholdings from the coming Census to address both inter-caste and intra-caste inequalities.