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On 25 August 2026 a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, agreed to consider setting up a special Bench to hear the Centre's plea for clarification of the judgment in Union of India v. Rohith Nathan.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the Department of Personnel and Training had filed an urgent application seeking directions from a Bench headed by Justice P. S. Narasimha, who delivered the judgment.
The judgment, delivered on 11 March 2026 by Justices P. S. Narasimha and R. Mahadevan, held that creamy-layer status among OBCs cannot be decided on parental income alone and that the status and rank of the parent's post must be considered.
It struck down the effect of a 2004 clarificatory letter that had allowed the salary of a parent in a public sector undertaking or the private sector to be counted, holding that an executive clarification could not amend the binding DoPT office memorandum of 8 September 1993.
The Centre argues that applying the ruling retrospectively from the Civil Services Examination of 2012 onwards would unsettle cadre allocations, state cadres and inter-se seniority across many batches, and has asked that it not disturb the allocation of 958 recommended candidates of CSE 2025.
The creamy layer doctrine comes from Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), the Mandal case, which upheld 27 per cent reservation for OBCs but required that the socially and economically advanced among them be excluded so that the benefit reaches the genuinely backward. The DoPT office memorandum of 8 September 1993 operationalised this through two different mechanisms. Categories I to V apply a status test: the children of constitutional functionaries, of Group A and Group B officers, of armed forces personnel of specified ranks and of PSU executives at equivalent levels are excluded because of the post the parent holds, whatever the salary. Category VI is a residual income and wealth test for families in trade, business or unclassified occupations, applied where no post-based classification fits - and the 1993 memorandum expressly excludes income from salary and from agricultural land when computing that limit, which has been revised over time from Rs 1 lakh in 1993 to Rs 8 lakh a year since 2017. The dispute in Rohith Nathan was about what happens when the two are mixed: whether a parent's salary in a PSU or a private firm can be used as an income test when the equivalence of the parent's post to a Group A or Group B post has never been established.
Simple Analogy: The 1993 scheme is a sieve with two meshes - one that catches families by the office the parent holds and one that catches the rest by income. The 2004 letter effectively used the income mesh on people the first sieve had never been calibrated for.
Indra Sawhney v. Union of India upholds 27 per cent OBC reservation and requires the exclusion of the creamy layer.
The DoPT office memorandum lays down the status test for Categories I to V and the residual income and wealth test for Category VI, with a limit of Rs 1 lakh a year and salary and agricultural income excluded from the computation.
A clarificatory letter allows the salary of PSU and private-sector employees to be counted - the paragraph later struck at in Rohith Nathan.
The income limit for the Category VI test is revised to Rs 8 lakh a year.
Union of India v. Rohith Nathan: the Supreme Court holds that income alone cannot determine creamy-layer status and orders supernumerary posts within six months.
The Court agrees to consider a special Bench to hear the Centre's plea on how the judgment applies to past and current examination cycles.
Permits the State to reserve appointments or posts for any backward class of citizens not adequately represented in the services under the State - the source of OBC reservation in public employment.
Equality before the law and equality of opportunity in public employment; the Court found that treating the children of PSU and private-sector employees differently from those of Group C and D government employees on salary alone violated both.
The Mandal judgment, which introduced the creamy-layer requirement for OBCs and capped total reservation at 50 per cent in ordinary circumstances.
The binding executive instrument that defines the creamy layer through the status test and the residual income and wealth test; the Court held that a later clarificatory letter could not amend it.
GS Paper 2 > Welfare Schemes and Mechanisms for Vulnerable Sections; Judiciary; Government Policies and Interventions
General Awareness > Indian Polity and Current Affairs
The socially and economically advanced section within a backward class, which must be excluded from reservation benefits so that they reach the genuinely backward.
A post created over and above the sanctioned strength of a service, used as a remedy to accommodate a candidate wronged in the selection process without displacing anyone already appointed.
In equality jurisprudence, a real and identifiable distinction between those grouped together and those left out, which must also bear a rational relation to the object of the classification for it to survive Article 14.
The relative ranking of officers of the same service among themselves, which determines promotion and posting and is disturbed if allocations of an earlier batch are reopened.