India, March 12 -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that the determination of creamy layer among other backward classes (OBC) should be the same for wards of public sector or private employees vis-a-vis government employees.

In a ruling that came on Centre's appeals against decisions by three high courts, which held the different yardsticks adopted to compute income for the determination of creamy layer for PSUs vis-a-vis government employees to be "discriminatory", the top court said that income cannot be the sole criterion to determine creamy layer status of OBC parents.

A bench of justices PS Narasimha and R Mahadevan said, "The object of excluding the creamy layer is to ensure that socially advanced sections within the OBCs do no...