Always applied two different income tests for OBC civil services candidates: DoPT

A series of contradictory positions has obscured how the Union govt determines which candidates from OBC communities can be allowed to claim reservations for jobs in India’s civil services.

A series of contradictory positions taken over the last few years has obscured how the Union government determines which candidates from other backward class (OBC) communities can be allowed to claim reservations for jobs in India’s civil services.

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When the OBC quota was introduced in 1993, a guiding charter was created to exclude OBC candidates whose families had accumulated certain social and economic privileges over the years, known as the creamy layer. This would then allow reservation benefits only for those declared as ‘non-creamy layer’ or NCL candidates, based on several criteria, including a crucial income or wealth test. Now, it has emerged that the Department of Personnel and Training has been applying two different income tests to different categories of OBC candidates. 

The tangle of regulations governing the OBC quota has come into the spotlight with the current row over Puja Khedkar, a trainee IAS officer who passed the civil services examination in 2022, and whose OBC-NCL certificate has come under scrutiny. Given that she is a medical doctor and her father is a retired civil servant who contested the recent Lok Sabha election, filing a candidate affidavit which valued his assets at over ₹40 crore, questions have arisen about how she could be given ‘non-creamy layer’ status. On Friday, the UPSC filed an FIR against her and has moved to cancel her candidature.

In the wake of this case, a number of OBC candidates have taken to social media to highlight how they were denied reservation benefits because of irregularities in the application of the income test.

The DoPT’s 1993 charter had declared some OBC families ineligible on the basis of their occupations. Thus, children of people in constitutional posts, senior Central and State government employees, members of the armed forces, and property owners supposedly could not avail of the OBC quota for the civil services. However, exceptions were carved out of these exclusions: for instance, children of MPs and MLAs; government officials who have been promoted, not hired, into senior positions; and owners of unirrigated agricultural land, among others are all now eligible for OBC quotas, subject to a parental annual income limit of ₹8 lakh.

However, the DoPT has discrimimated in terms of how this income test is applied. Only the exceptional cases mentioned above are allowed to exclude their parents’ salaries and agricultural income from the prescribed limit. For other OBC candidates whose parents are salaried professionals, business owners, farmers, or simply not part of the initial exclusions, the ₹8 lakh limit includes parental salaries. The DoPT explained these dual standards in the application of the OBC income test in an October 2020 affidavit filed in the Supreme Court.