He cleared UPSC, but his appointment never came; nearly 100 faced same fate

For one UPSC aspirant, clearing the Civil Services Examination in 2022 should have been the moment years of preparation finally paid off. His family and relatives celebrated his success, believing that a government career was finally within reach. But when the service allocation list was released about three months later, his name was missing. During the conversation with BBC Marathi, the candidate, identified as Satej, was left trying to explain how someone who had cleared one of India’s toughest competitive exams could still have no government posting. His experience is at the centre of a much larger dispute involving nearly 100 OBC candidates who say they were denied reservation benefits because they were treated as part of the “creamy layer”. The issue has now reached the Supreme Court, which in March 2026 ruled that an OBC candidate’s creamy-layer status cannot be determined only by looking at the parent’s salary.