NEW DELHI: A meeting of the Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes (OBC) on Wednesday saw some Opposition members, including Congress leader Manickam Tagore, raising difficulties being faced by OBC candidates over verification of creamy layer ceiling while joining the civil services despite clearing the exams.According to sources, the MPs raised the issue when officials of the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment were briefing on the subject of ‘Implementation of various measures and schemes for Welfare of OBCs’.Tagore, along with DMK’s TR Baalu and Samajwadi Party’s Ramashankar Rajbhar, raised the issue of creamy layer being used as a roadblock for young successful candidates of the 2023 civil services examination, sources said.In September this year, Tagore had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to draw attention to the troubling issue affecting many meritorious candidates from the OBC category who have successfully cleared the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) civil services examination.These candidates are currently facing significant obstacles related to the verification of their OBC Non-Creamy Layer (NCL) status, which is preventing them from joining their designated services, he had said in the letter.In his letter, the MP highlighted that the “core of the problem revolves around the rejection of state government-issued equivalence certificates that confirm the class III/IV status of the candidates’ parents.”The issue of regulations governing OBC quota had sparked a row over the OBC-NCL certificate of Puja Khedkar, a trainee IAS officer who passed the civil services in 2022.Although the 1993 office memorandum issued by the Department of Personnel and Training provides guidelines for OBC-NCL classification, there is no explicit clause that mandates rejection of these state-issued certificates, he pointed out in the letter. “In practice, however, these certificates are often dismissed by authorities, leading to unjust disqualification of many OBC candidates,” he said.According to the Congress leader, the prevailing interpretation of the model form, which excludes family income from salaries and agricultural land, has been inconsistent, and disproportionately affects candidates whose parents are employed in public sector undertakings, public sector banks, and other public sector bodies while favouring Central and state government roles.He demanded that the Union government must coin inclusive policy regarding the acceptance of state government-issued equivalence certificates for candidates whose parents hold Class III/IV posts, enforce the uniform interpretation of income criteria for OBC-NCL status enabling candidates whose parents work in public sector institutions to be treated equitably, and improve transparency in the verification process for service allocation and OBC status.In an X post on Wednesday, he said, “Why has Modi ji not raised the creamy layer income ceiling for OBCs since 2017? It’s been seven years with no adjustment to account for inflation and changing economic realities. Who is betraying OBCs?”
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