The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) is learnt to have moved a Cabinet note asking for exclusion of the creamy layer from the ambit of reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) in central educational institutions.

The note is aimed at making certain amendments to the Central Educational Institutions (reservation in admission) Act, 2006, which provides for 27 per cent OBC quota in central educational institutes.

The ministry seems to be aiming at carrying forward whatever the Supreme Court provided in its last week’s verdict giving the go-ahead to the move but excluding the creamy layer. This is because any delay may lead to loss of another academic year.

HRD Minister Arjun Singh had earlier said his ministry would make every effort to see that the quota was implemented from this year. Now, the ministry wants the Cabinet to take up the issue and pave the way for an early rollout.

While the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have delayed their admission lists by a week, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) held their joint entrance examination only two days ago.

All these institutes, apart from central universities, are awaiting the ministry’s clarification on the creamy layer issue so that they can plan their admission procedure accordingly.

Now, the issue has to be taken up by the Cabinet and put before Parliament in this session (which ends on May 9). After the quota Bill got the approval of Parliament in 2006 and the subsequent assent of the president, the Supreme Court had, in March last year, stayed the Act.

Since then, the matter was the subject of a constitutional debate, which only eased with last week’s go-ahead by the court.

Now, the government is faced with the challenge of exclusion of the creamy layer. Though there is a definition of what constitutes creamy layer for jobs, there is no clarity in case of educational institutes.

In central government jobs, a person with annual family income of more than Rs 2.5 lakh is considered as belonging to the creamy layer. But a limit of Rs 2.5 lakh is being termed as very low.