Will ‘creamy layer’ ceiling be raised?

Jun 14, 2012 - Mukesh Ranjan |

New Delhi

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For the government, a person having a daily consumption of Rs28.65 in urban areas and Rs22.42 in rural areas may not be poor, but children of backward caste parents having monthly income of up to Rs50,000 may soon become eligible to get reservation under the OBC quota.

A proposal to upwardly revise the income cutoff for determining the “creamy layer” for OBC reservation is high on the agenda of the Union Cabinet, which will meet on Thursday.

Confirming this, sources in the government revealed that a proposal from the ministry of social justice and empowerment is high on the agenda of the meeting of the Union Cabinet to consider upward revision of annual income cutoff for the creamy layer from the current Rs4.5 lakhs to Rs6 lakhs.

“The new cutoff figure has been drawn on the basis of the latest available Consumer Price Index (CPI) of December 2011,” sources added.

The move, however, is seen as an attempt to assuage the OBC satraps, particularly at a time when the support of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the upcoming presidential elections has become very crucial.

They have consistently been maintaining that the current cutoff of Rs4.5 lakhs is unrealistic. Incidentally, even the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) had recommended Rs12 lakhs annual income as cutoff for determining the creamy layer. Arguing in favour of the new figure, the NCBC had said that value of Rs100 in 1993 has dwindled to Rs29 in 2011 and this has made income limits like Rs4.5 lakhs redundant.

The “creamy layer” represents the income ceiling that bars the OBCs earning higher from availing reservation in jobs and educational institutions. It has so far gone up since the reservation for the OBCs was introduced in 1993 at Rs1 lakh. This was subsequently revised to Rs2.5 lakhs in 2004 and then Rs4.5 lakhs in 2008.

Interestingly, in case of determining poverty in India the government has separate yardsticks for urban and rural population, but in case of OBC reservation the Centre is likely to keep a unified “creamy layer”, which is contrary to the NCBC’s suggestion.

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