Administrative orders must be judged solely on the reasons recorded therein and cannot be supplemented by fresh grounds.

The petitioner applied for the post of Patwari under the DDA as an OBC-Non-Creamy Layer (NCL) candidate.

The recruitment advertisement stipulated that the OBC-NCL certificate must be issued between 1 April 2025 and 5 November 2025.

The petitioner’s certificate was issued on 19 April 2025.

The DDA rejected his candidature on 20 March 2026, claiming the certificate was not issued within the prescribed window.

The Tribunal dismissed the OA, not on the grounds cited by the DDA, but on the reasoning that the certificate pertained to the wrong Financial Year (2025-2026 instead of 2024-2025).

Whether the Tribunal erred in dismissing the petitioner’s case based on grounds not raised by the respondent for the cancellation of candidature.

Whether the Tribunal wrongly applied the Financial Year criteria meant for EWS candidates to an OBC-NCL candidate.

The Court relied on the administrative law principle that an executive order must be judged solely by the reasons stated therein and cannot be supplanted by fresh reasons in an affidavit or subsequent adjudication, as established in Commissioner of Police v. Gordhandas Bhanji.

The court relied on the doctrine reiterated in Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner that the validity of an order must stand or fall on the reasons contained within that order.

The court noted the misapplication of recruitment notification criteria, specifically the distinction between OBC-NCL and EWS certification requirements.

The High Court found that the Tribunal drifted into a "complete tangent" by examining the Financial Year of the certificate rather than the date of issuance, which was the actual point of contention.

Under the doctrine in Mohinder Singh Gill, the validity of the DDA’s cancellation order must "stand or fall" on the reasons contained within that order; therefore, the Tribunal could not introduce foreign grounds to justify the cancellation.

The Court observed that the Tribunal mistakenly applied the Financial Year testing criteria intended for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) to the petitioner’s OBC-NCL status, an error which the DDA's counsel conceded.

The Court remanded OA 1239/2026 back to the Tribunal for reconsideration and directed both parties to appear before the Tribunal on 16 July 2026 for an expedited resolution.