It is learnt that the department of personnel and training has rejected the claims of over 20 OBC candidates who were waiting to be allocated the service for training which starts next week.
While the OBCs rejected for 2016 batch are said to number around 20-25, such candidates number around 50-60 over five batches since 2013.
The list of 2016 batch has been finalised but OBC candidates who were dubbed as belonging to the "creamy layer", have not been allotted services, said some from the aggrieved camp. The final list of DoPT suggests likewise.
Interestingly, on Friday, the government issued a "reserve list" to fill extra 109 posts and the rejected OBCs of 2016 batch don't figure in it either. "Creamy layer" refers to the well-off among OBCs who are not eligible for Mandal reservations.
What makes contentious the simple issue of "creamy layer" is the methodology used by the central government in calculating it for wards of backwards employed in PSUs as against those working in the central and state governments.
The Madras high court in September rejected the Centre's method of calculating the "creamy layer" for candidates whose parents are working in PSUs. The HC judgement, reported exclusively by TOI, said the principle for determining "creamy layer" should be the same for PSUs/private sector and the government. Significantly, the Centre has filed an appeal against the Madras HC order in the Supreme Court, and has secured a stay.
The "creamy layer" formula lays down that Group A and Group B (except in certain conditions like age of promotion) are ineligible for quotas while others are eligible provided their annual income from other sources is not above Rs 8 lakh. The critical bit is that annual income doesn't include the salaries of parents. While the Centre has been applying this "exclusion criteria" for wards of persons employed in central and state governments, in case of PSUs/private sector, the Centre has been calculating the "creamy layer" on the basis of salaries of parents.
This "discrimination" was challenged by two successful OBC candidates in the Madras HC and is also the basis for an ongoing case in the Delhi HC. The scope for confusion stems from the fact that the Centre has not yet worked out the table to determine which posts in PSUs fall under Group A, B, C and D as happens in the government - a process called "equivalence of posts".
On August 31, the Madras HC bench of Justices H G Ramesh and G Jayachandran turned down Centre's and DoPT's challenge against the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal in favour of Rohith Nathan and G Babu whose parents worked in PSUs/private sector. They had cleared the UPSC exam but were denied OBC quotas after being ruled as belonging to the "creamy layer".
As reported by TOIon July 17, 2016, the National Commission for Backward Classes had written to the government about the anomaly, warning there could be a backlash from the backwards if DoPT officials did not rectify their methods of calculating the "creamy layer" for PSUs. In its judgment, HC has ruled that if salary of parents employed in government isn't a criteria for assessing "creamy layer", the salary of a PSU employee "as a test for identifying creamy layer brings in the element of hostile discrimination".
