On 11 March 2026, a two-judge bench held that creamy-layer status under the DoPT 1993 Office Memorandum cannot be determined solely on parental income; the status-based and income-based gates must be applied as distinct, and the DoPT clarificatory letter of 14 October 2004 was held ultra vires the substantive 1993 OM framework.
On 16 November 1992, a nine-judge Constitution Bench upheld the implementation of the Mandal Commission's recommendation for 27% reservation in Central Government services for Other Backward Classes — but bounded the framework with two structural constraints: reservations could not, in the aggregate, exceed 50% of available positions, and the 'creamy layer' of the backward class had to be excluded from the benefit. Three decades on, the framework remains the constitutional architecture of Indian reservations policy. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and how it continues to govern.