The issue concerning the two components of OBC creamy layer exclusion — income/wealth test and equivalence of posts — appears to be stuck between the Ministry of Personnel, Pensions, and Public Grievances and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, said BJP MP and chief of the House panel on welfare of OBCs Ganesh Singh.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. But that has not happened. The Cabinet Minister in charge of the Personnel Ministry is Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Social Justice Ministry is headed by Virendra Singh. The committee, under Mr. Singh, has also been pushing for the Social Justice Ministry to establish equivalence between posts. The last time the House panel on OBC welfare was seized of the matter was in hearings related to the DoPT’s implementation of the reservation policy for OBCs. “There are candidates who are considered part of the creamy layer for one year by the UPSC, but in another year, they are considered as non-creamy layer.
In these hearings in 2025, the Ministry of Personnel had said that the issue was related to OBC candidates with parents in jobs where equivalence had not been established. The Personnel Ministry further said in April, 2025 that it was the Social Justice Ministry that was responsible for establishing this equivalence, and in August that year, the Ministry said the Social Justice Ministry had been asked to respond to the House Committee. Ideally, the Social Justice Ministry should have formed the policy on equivalence of posts and application of the income test so that it can be placed before the Cabinet.
He said ideally the Social Justice Ministry should formulate the policy based on the Supreme Court’s reading of the income test in March and then bring it to the Cabinet. “That has not happened yet,” Mr. Singh said. The judgment had ruled that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) was practising “hostile discrimination” in applying the income test differently to OBC candidates with parents in government service and OBC candidates with parents in jobs where the equivalence with government posts had not been established. Singh said, “The Personnel Ministry and the Social Justice Ministry seem to be passing the job along to each other. However, officials told The Hindu that the Social Justice Ministry has yet to respond to the committee on this issue. In the applications submitted to the Supreme Court earlier this month, the Centre has said that establishing equivalence for all existing State PSUs itself could take up to two years and that it may take more time to do this for posts in the private sector. The candidate explained that the issue of “unequal and arbitrary” application of the income test was only being seen in the DoPT. There are candidates who have been excluded by UPSC as creamy layer but have been considered as non-creamy layer in other government recruitments,” the candidate said, adding that this was a problem with how the DoPT reads and applies the income test.
