Amidst the raging debate over quotas, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has for the first time fixed a three-year tenure for non-creamy layer certificates of OBC candidates. This will ensure better implementation of the Supreme Court ruling on keeping the creamy layer out of reservation.

An order to this effect was passed by CAT’s Guwahati bench, comprising vice-chairman KV Sachidanandan and administrative member Gautam Ray, while deciding the case of an OBC Railway employee. The Tribunal found that “in the absence of any rule fixing limitation of such certificate and taking confidence from the changing financial status and fast emerging economic scenario, such certificate beyond three years becomes stale.”

The Tribunal, however, left it open to the competent authority to make rules reducing or enhancing the three-year period. “Till then, the period of three years could be construed for valid period for non-creamy (layer) certificate for all further purpose,” it said.

The non-creamy layer certificate is proof of the candidate’s economic status, attestation of the fact that he or she does not belong to the creamy layer which has been kept out of the purview of reservation.

But the very objective of the SC judgment had been watered down due to the absence of any prescribed check period to determine when an OBC candidate who is availing the benefits of reservation in employment, by virtue of his non-creamy layer status, will grow out of it.

So far, the Government has not prescribed any fixed validity period for the certificates. A 2003 Office Memorandum of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions had merely left the issue hanging, saying “it is not possible to determine a fixed validity period for the OBC certificate” as the creamy layer status may change any time.

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