The Center requested the Supreme Court permission for an early hearing on its motion against the retrospective application of the Supreme Court's decision from March 11. This decision prohibited classifying candidates from among representatives of the OVS based on the salaries of parents working in state enterprises (PSU) or in the private sector.
State Solicitor Tushar Mehta asked the panel led by Chief Justice Suri Kant to include in the agenda a statement requesting clarification regarding the March 11 decision in the Rohit Nathan case. This was objected to by lawyer Varun Thakur, who argued that this legal issue has already been resolved by the Supreme Court.
The General Solicitor stated that the Center does not seek to review or change this decision, but only wishes to inform the court about the difficulties arising from retrospective implementation. He noted that this will require changing the status of earlier groups of OVS representatives considered the 'cream layer' to non-'cream' status, which will entail changes to their position, cadre, and civil service career. Furthermore, it will require similar changes for an equal number of candidates who have served for a long time in structures such as IFS, IAS, and IPS, leading to chaos.
Mehta specified that he is only asking for the early inclusion of the matter on the agenda before the panel of judges P. S. Narasimhi and R. Mahadevan. The Chief Justice agreed to include the statements on the agenda for September 1.
In its submission, the Center indicated that 'due to serious problems and consequences related to the implementation of the Supreme Court's directives, the government intends to develop a policy that effectively resolves the observations made by the Supreme Court while ensuring fairness in the direct and indirect impact of this policy.' The government added that if the March 11 decision is implemented without proper policy intervention, it will have far-reaching effects on recruitment and admission to higher educational institutions overseen by the central government, as well as 18 states/territories with states.
It was also noted that large structures and employers, such as railways, banks, postal services, and paramilitary forces, will face hundreds of thousands of applications and lawsuits requiring the retrospective reclassification of the 'cream layer.'
Following Indra Sawant's ruling in 1992, the government issued a memorandum on September 8, 1993, establishing criteria for determining the OVS 'cream layer' excluded from reservation benefits. In its March 11 decision, the Supreme Court also ruled that the determination of the 'cream layer' status must be based on professional categories specified in the 1993 memorandum, and that the income of parents working in private organizations cannot automatically serve as grounds for concluding a candidate belongs to the 'cream layer.'