Civil Service candidates await Centre’s word on foundation course amid case in top court

Why in the News

The Centre has asked the Supreme Court for permission to let the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) allocate services to the 2025 Civil Services Examination recommendees without implementing the Rohith Nathan judgment. That judgment, delivered on 11 March, found that the DoPT was excluding certain Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates from reservation by treating them as creamy layer on the basis of their parents’ salary income alone. The Court directed corrective measures within six months. The examination results had been declared on 6 March, days before the ruling, which places one entire recruitment cycle across the line the judgment drew. The 958 candidates recommended in that cycle now have no service allocation and no foundation course date.

What is the creamy layer income test?

1. Where it comes from: The DoPT Office Memorandum of 8 September 1993 operationalised the Supreme Court’s direction in Indra Sawhney (1992) to exclude the socially advanced sections within a backward class.
2. How it is structured: The Memorandum sets out a Schedule of six categories. The first five exclude a candidate by the status of the parent regardless of income, covering constitutional posts, service grades, armed forces ranks, professions and trade, and property ownership.
3. The sixth category is residual: It applies an income and wealth test to everyone the first five do not catch, using gross annual family income above the ceiling for three consecutive years.
4. What the income test leaves out: Salary income and agricultural income are excluded from that calculation. Only income from property, business, capital gains and similar sources is counted, and the ceiling has stood at Rs 8 lakh since 2017.

What did the Rohith Nathan judgment find, and what did it direct?

1. The finding: A Division Bench held that the DoPT was treating equals unequally, since the single variable separating two otherwise identical candidates was the parent’s employer.
2. How the discrimination worked: A child of a government clerk was tested without salary income and passed. A child of a public sector or private employee on the same pay was tested with salary income counted and failed.
3. What the Court held on the test itself: The income and wealth component is a residual filter, not the primary basis for exclusion. It must apply the same way to all until the government establishes equivalence between public sector posts and government grades.
4. The direction: The Centre was to create supernumerary posts for the petitioners within six months, with services allotted according to the candidates’ ranks in their respective examination years.

Why is the service allocation stalled?

1. The Centre has asked to be excused from the ruling for this cycle: Its application seeks permission for the DoPT to allocate services without implementing the judgment.
2. The cycle straddles the ruling: Results were declared on 6 March and the judgment came on 11 March, so allocation for this batch would be the first application of whichever reading the Court settles on.
3. Nothing moves until the hearing: The Supreme Court is set to hear the Centre on 17 September, and the allocation question is what that hearing turns on.

What are the 958 recommendees facing?

1. The course has not begun: The foundation course was expected to begin in August and has not started.
2. The schedule lapsed without a replacement: A tentative start date of 24 August was circulated, and nothing has been communicated since the matter came before the Court.
3. No communication has reached the candidates: Recommended candidates report receiving nothing from the DoPT or from the academy about when the course will start.
4. Neither official channel has been updated: No updates on the next steps have appeared on the DoPT website or on the website of the training academy.

Challenges to the creamy layer determination

1. The equivalence of posts was never established: The 1993 Schedule made the rank test for public sector and private employees conditional on an equivalence with government grades that has not been drawn up in three decades. Eg. Reservation policy is the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s subject under the Allocation of Business Rules, and the DoPT can only issue instructions once that Ministry frames the policy.
   The Fix: Notify a post-equivalence table so the rank-based categories apply uniformly whoever the employer is, which removes the need for the income test in these cases altogether.
2. The income ceiling moves by discretion rather than by indexation: With no formula, the threshold stays static through years of inflation and then jumps, so the excluded population changes for reasons unrelated to backwardness. Eg. The ceiling went from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 8 lakh in five irregular steps over 24 years.
   The Fix: Tie the ceiling to a published price or wage index with automatic annual revision.
3. Verification rests on self-declaration: Certificates are issued on a declaration checked by local revenue staff, so a defect surfaces only when the appointment is scrutinised. Eg. Recruitment bodies cancel candidatures years after selection over defective certificates.
   The Fix: Validate income declarations against tax and land records at the point the certificate is issued rather than at the point of appointment.
4. No data exists on who actually captures the benefit: Without caste-wise data on selections and appointments, the claim that a small number of families corner reserved posts cannot be tested either way. Eg. The Rohini Commission on sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes worked without a comprehensive survey of selections.
   The Fix: Publish caste-wise selection and appointment data against reserved posts as a standing annual return.
5. Central and State lists diverge: A community recognised as backward by a State is often absent from the Central list, and the same test is administered differently across the two. Eg. Candidates holding State OBC certificates have been denied central reservation.
   The Fix: Publish a mapped concordance between the Central list and each State list, so a candidate can see which list governs a given post.

Conclusion

The dispute is no longer about whether the exclusion was wrong, since that has been decided. It is about who absorbs the cost of correcting it, and both available answers create a fresh set of claimants. A recruitment cycle cannot be held open indefinitely, and a batch allotted on a reading the Court has already rejected moves the litigation one year forward rather than ending it. The hearing later this month is where that choice is made, and the marker is whether the Court permits an interim allotment or holds the executive to the timetable it set.

Back2Basics

1. What it is: The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration is the central training institution for the Indian Administrative Service.
2. Where it is: It is located at Mussoorie in Uttarakhand.
3. What the foundation course is: The Academy runs the common Foundation Course taken by fresh recruits to the All India Services and the Central Civil Services before they move to their own service academies.
4. Who administers it: It functions under the Department of Personnel and Training, and was formed in 1959 by merging the earlier IAS Training School at Delhi and the IAS Staff College at Shimla.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2024, GS1, 15 marks] Despite comprehensive policies for equity and social justice, underprivileged sections are not yet getting the full benefits of affirmative action envisaged by the Constitution. Comment.”