The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 25) agreed to constitute a Special Bench to hear the Centre’s plea seeking clarification on whether its March 2026 verdict on OBC creamy layer criteria applies to the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2025.The dispute focuses on what happens when a court changes the legal position after an examination process has largely concluded.In March, the court held that salary income could not, by itself, be the basis for excluding children of those employed in public sector undertakings and the private sector from reservation benefits for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The Centre now argues that CSE-2025 had substantially concluded before the judgment was delivered and wants clarity on whether the ruling can alter a recruitment cycle whose results had already been declared.Here’s what the case entails, the legal doctrine that governs service law, and how it matters in the OBC creamy layer case.The case originated from a Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) letter of October 14, 2004, clarifying an Official Memorandum (OM) of September 1993 on the creamy layer criterion for OBCs. The creamy layer refers to the economically, socially, and educationally advanced members of the OBC category who are excluded from government reservation benefits.The 1993 OM had excluded income from salary and agricultural sources from the income/wealth test used to determine creamy layer status. The 2004 clarification, however, said the salary income of employees in PSUs and the private sector would be a criterion. This was not implemented effectively until 2014 — it began to be applied rigorously from the CSE-2015 (corresponding to the 2016 batch).Since then, around 100 candidates who possessed caste certificates issued by competent authorities and cleared the CSE have found their OBC claims rejected by the DoPT on the creamy layer ground. Most of them are parties in different petitions before the Supreme Court and various High Courts. The petitioners argue that this was “hostile discrimination” between the wards of government servants and those of PSUs or private sector employees.Story continues below this adIn its judgment on March 11, 2026, a Division Bench of Supreme Court Justices P S Narasimha and R Mahadevan ruled that income cannot be the sole criterion for determining the creamy layer among OBCs. “The object of excluding the creamy layer is… not to create artificial distinctions between equally placed members of the same social class… unequal treatment of similarly placed OBC candidates would not only be legally erroneous but constitutionally impermissible,” the court said.Further, it held that treating the children of those employed in PSUs or private employment as excluded from reservation benefits solely on the basis of salary income, without reference to the nature of their posts (Group A, B, C or D), “would certainly lead to hostile discrimination between parties who are similarly placed and would amount to equals being treated unequally, thereby attracting the rigour of the equality doctrine under Articles 14, 15 and 16”.The top court had set a six-month timeline (until September 11) for implementation of its verdict, which the Centre had appeared set to enforce until its plea on Tuesday. If the March 11 judgment is implemented in full, its benefits would extend not only to candidates appearing in future examinations but also to those affected in earlier cycles. The implementation could hence lead to revised ranks for some.‘Rules of the game’One of the settled principles in service law is that the criteria governing a selection process cannot be changed midway through the process. The Supreme Court has described this as the “rules of the game” doctrine.Story continues below this adAlso Read | Explained: How creamy layer among OBCs is determined; why its revision is stuckA Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in Tej Prakash Pathak v. Rajasthan High Court (2024) held that “the rules of the game, meaning thereby, that the criteria for selection cannot be altered by the authorities concerned in the middle or after the process of selection has commenced”.The principle exists to protect candidates who enter a recruitment or admission process based on a particular set of rules. Once the process begins, courts have generally been reluctant to let authorities introduce new criteria or change existing ones midway.Recent NEET matterIn January 2026, the Supreme Court applied the same principle to an admissions dispute in Divjot Sekhon v. State of Punjab. The case concerned admissions to MBBS and BDS courses under Punjab’s sports quota. After the prospectus had been issued and candidates had applied, the state widened the eligibility criteria for the quota.The court held that “it is well-settled that the rules of the game cannot be altered once the game has begun”, adding that the principle was “just as applicable to admission processes to educational courses as it would be to recruitment processes”.Story continues below this ad“Just as modification of recruitment norms is forbidden in law after the recruitment process has begun, it is equally illegal for an admission process to not be fully defined in all its contours before its commencement, so as to leave room for the authorities concerned to stipulate norms later on to suit their own interests or to permit nepotism,” the court said.Having found the revised criteria unlawful, the court then turned to the question of relief. Ordinarily, it noted, it could have directed the entire merit list to be redrawn. However, it declined to do so, observing that such an exercise would affect candidates who were not before it and would “unsettle settled matters”.The Centre’s pleaIn its application before the Supreme Court, the government has argued that the March 11 judgment “altering settled position” on creamy layer criteria was delivered five days after the final result of CSE-2025 had already been declared. It has said that CSE-2025 “stood substantially concluded prior to the pronouncement of the judgment” and is presently at the “terminal stage of service allocation”.The Centre has further argued that a “mechanical or unqualified application of the ratio of the said judgment, with retrospective effect, to the already-concluded selection process of CSE-2025” would create “a peculiar and acute anomaly amounting to discrimination inter se candidates of the very examination cycle sought to be benefited”.Story continues below this adAccording to the government, reopening category-wise merit lists at this stage would have a cascading effect on training schedules, batch strength, cadre allocation, seniority, and pay fixation.Those concerns resemble the considerations that pushed the court in Divjot Sekhon not to redraw an entire admission list after finding the governing rule unlawful. But in Divjot Sekhon, the court moulded the relief in a manner that avoided disrupting students who had already secured admissions and were not before the court.The Centre’s plea has asked the court to clarify that the March 11 judgment should not be applied “with retrospective effect” to the “already-concluded selection process of CSE-2025″ so as to “unsettle completed admissions in higher educational institutions, completed academic sessions, degrees already conferred, or settled rights of students”.