Legal Reference Library

The Supreme Court, in Om Prakash vs Mishri Lal (Deceased), has reiterated that a co-owner can alone maintain a suit for eviction of the tenant without joining the other co-owners if such other co-owners do not object. The court made this observation in an appeal preferred against the high court order which had upheld a Rent Control Authority order negating the appellants’status of that of a landlord. “The judicially propounded proposition is that when the property forming the subject matter of eviction proceedings is owned by several co-owners, every co-owner owns every part and every bit of the joint property along with others and thus it cannot be said that he is only a part owner or a fractional owner of the property,” a bench comprising Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Amitava Roy said. Setting aside the high court order, the court observed that the appellants being the son of the original landlord, their status as landlords for the purpose of eviction under the Uttar Pradesh ...

Our conclusions are crystallised as under: (i) The words “for his own use” as occurring in Section 13(3)(a)(ii) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 must receive a wide, liberal and useful meaning rather than a strict or narrow construction. (ii) The expression — landlord requires for “his own use”, is not confined in its meaning to actual physical user by the landlord personally. The requirement not only of the landlord himself but also of the normal “emanations” of the landlord is included therein. All the cases and circumstances in which actual physical occupation or user by someone else, would amount to occupation or user by the landlord himself, cannot be exhaustively enumerated. It will depend on a variety of factors such as interrelationship and interdependence — economic or otherwise, between the landlord and such person in the background of social, socio-religious and local customs and obligations of the society or region to which they belong. (iii) The te...

In Nandkishor Savalaram Malu (Dead) Through Lrs. Vs. Hanumanmal G. Biyani (D) Thr. Lrs. & Ors., the matter was eviction of a partnership firm which was the lessee/tenant and whether employees as well as the partners have to be made parties to the suit. The Hon'ble Supreme Court of India held that " we are of the considered opinion that neither the Firm nor their partners and nor defendant no.1 had any legal right to remain in possession of the suit house. The reason being that so far as the Firm and its partners were concerned (defendant Nos. 2 to 9), they being the tenant rightly suffered the decree for payment of arrears of rent and eviction under the Rent Act and so far as defendant no.1 was concerned, he was neither an owner of the suit house nor a tenant inducted by the appellants and nor a licensee but was held to be an employee of the Firm and a rank trespasser in the suit house. 24) The legal effect of such eviction decree under the Rent Act was that the possessio...

The Supreme Court in Rajender Bansal & Ors. Vs. Bhuru (D), has held that a civil court would not cease to have jurisdiction to try a pending suit of eviction if the suit property came under the notified area during pendency of the suit. The bench comprising Justice AK Sikri and Justice NV Ramana summarised the following principles laid down in several decisions like Mansoor Khan Vs. Moti Ram and Atma Ram Mittal Vs. Ishwar Singh Punia: * Rights of the parties stand crystallised on the date of the institution of the suit and, therefore, the law applicable on the date of filing of the suit will continue to apply until suit is disposed of or adjudicated. *If during the pendency of the suit, the Rent Act becomes applicable to the premises in question, that would be of no consequence and it would not take away the jurisdiction of civil court to dispose of a suit validly instituted. *In order to oust the jurisdiction of civil court, there must be a specific provision in the Act taki...

In A. Talukdar & Company (Fertilizer) Private Limited Vs. Respondent: The Official Liquidator, High Court of Calcutta and Ors., the Hon'ble Supreme Court said that If an order to wind up a company is recalled and the company is revived, it is entitled to get back from the official liquidator its entire assets. Tenants who occupied the premises during the proceedings shall go out. The company court can evict them.

The Supreme Court has held that a farmer, who is in possession of leased land even after expiry of the lease period, cannot be evicted if the owner either acknowledges the tenancy or is accepting the rent. Referring to a provision of the Transfer of Property Act, a three-judge bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi set aside the judgement of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had ordered the eviction of a farmer after expiry of the lease period of the land. “The operation of section 116 of the Transfer of Property Act would confer legitimacy to the possession of the tenant even after the termination or expiration of the deemed period of the lease so as to confer on him a status akin to that of a statutory tenant and hence protection from eviction as envisaged by the provisions of the Act (Punjab Security of Land Tenure Act) of 1953,” the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra and P C Pant, said. The bench said there was no legal provision to evict the farmers as ...

Tenants protected from creditors In a judgment that grants relief to tenants, the Supreme Court has declared that the provisions of the Securitisation Act (Sarfaesi) cannot be used to override the provisions of the Rent Control Act. The Supreme Court, while setting aside judgments in several cases of the Bombay High Court, underlined that the Rent Control Act is a social welfare legislation and must be construed as such. In the case, Vishal Kalsaria vs Bank of India, the court further explained that while Sarfaesi is concerned with non-performing assets of banks and financial institutions, the Rent Control Act governs the relationship between a tenant and the landlord and specifies the rules of ejectment with respect to tenants. The banks had proceeded to take possession of the properties of landlords, who had defaulted on payments for the loans taken by mortgaging the properties. The tenants were caught in between. "If the contentions of the banks are to be accepted," ...