New Delhi, July 1: The cutoff income to determine the OBC creamy layer should be raised from Rs 2.5 lakh a year to Rs 4.5 lakh to allow more of them to enjoy the quota benefits, the backward classes commission has recommended.

The Centre, under pressure from allies, could be considering a sharper increase, up to Rs 6 lakh a year, officials said.

The National Commission for Backward Classes made its recommendation, which tries to correct the effect of inflation, in a report handed to social justice minister Meira Kumar today, government sources said.

All members of Other Backward Classes communities with a combined family income lower than the ceiling are eligible for reservation in jobs and higher education. But since 2004, when the previous cap of Rs 2.5 lakh was fixed, inflation has caused more and more families to fall off the category.

The suggested cutoff aims to rectify this, making roughly the same proportion of the OBC population eligible for quotas as in 2004.

The commission, headed by retired Supreme Court judge S. Ratnavel Pandian, has called the proposed hike “reasonable”, but government sources said the cutoff could be raised further.

“There is pressure from the UPA allies to raise it to around Rs 6 lakh. That too must be considered apart from the commission’s recommendation,” a senior official of the social justice ministry said.

Earlier this year, the DMK, PMK and the Rashtriya Janata Dal had opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to exclude the relatively well-off OBCs from the newly introduced reservation policy in higher education. The creamy layer has been kept out of the older job quota since 1993.

A higher income cap will mitigate the effects of the apex court decision, a source explained.

At the media briefing after she had received the commission report, minister Meira Kumar staunchly refused to reveal the new cutoff suggested by the commission.

“Till we fix the final ceiling to be adopted, we don’t want to disclose details that may fetch us only controversy,” the senior ministry official said. Officials of the commission were equally tight-lipped.

Kumar’s ministry will present the report, and its own views on the recommendation, before the cabinet. “The cabinet will take the final decision,” the minister said.

The Centre had introduced Rs 1 lakh as the ceiling in 1993 before revising it in 2004. In December 2007, the social justice ministry asked the commission to revise it again.

The commission worked out the inflation rate from the changes in the consumer price index and the income patterns of OBC communities in India. The calculations threw up a figure of Rs 4.16 lakh.

“The commission rounded the figure off to Rs 4.5 lakh,” a ministry source said.