OBC creamy layer extended to PSUs, financial institutions

IN A significant decision, the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its approval to the norms for establishing equivalence of posts in government and posts in PSUs, PSBs etc. for claiming benefit of OBC reservations.
This addresses an issue pending for nearly 24 years. "This will ensure that the children of those serving in lower categories in PSUs and other institutions can get the benefit...
of OBC reservations, on par with children of people serving in lower categories in Government,” an official statement said.
This will also prevent children of those in senior positions in such institutions, who, owing to absence of equivalence of posts, may have been treated as non-Creamy Layer by virtue of wrong interpretation of income standards from cornering government posts reserved for OBCs and denying the genuine non creamy layer candidates a level playing field.
The Union Cabinet also approved the increase in the present income criterion of Rs. 6 lakh per annum for applying the Creamy Layer restriction throughout the country, for excluding Socially Advanced Persons/Sections (Creamy Layer) from the purview of reservation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The new income criterion will be Rs. 8 lakh per annum.
“The increase in the income limit to exclude the Creamy Layer is in keeping with the increase in the Consumer Price Index and will enable more persons to take advantage of reservation benefits extended to OBCs in government services and admission to central educational institutions,” it added.
In its 1992 judgment, the Supreme Court had directed the Government to specify the basis, for exclusion of socially and economically advanced persons from Other Backward Classes by applying the relevant and requisite socio-economic criteria.
An Expert Committee was constituted in February 1993 which submitted its report on 10.03.1993 specifying the criteria for identification of socially advanced persons among OBCs i.e. the Creamy Layer. The report was accepted by the then Ministry of Welfare and forwarded to DoPT which issued an OM dated 08.09.1993 on exclusion from the Creamy Layer.
The decision comes 23 years after a 1993 office order of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) provided for 27 percent quota for the OBCs in government vacancies and laid down criteria for defining 'creamy layer'. This order merely said the criterion enumerated for Group A and Group B posts would apply to officers "holding equivalent and comparable posts" in the PSUs, banks and financial institutions.
Briefing reporters on August 30 about the decisions of the Union Cabinet, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said an approval was accorded to the norms for establishing equivalence of posts.
In PSUs, all executive level posts, board-level executives and managerial-level posts, would be treated as equivalent to group 'A' posts in the government and will be considered 'creamy layer'.
Junior management grade scale 1 and above of public sector banks, financial institutions and public sector insurance corporations will be treated as equivalent to group 'A' in the government and considered as 'creamy layer'.
However, this exercise of determining the equivalence of posts in Government and posts in PSUs, PSBs etc. had not been initiated.