While the Delhi high court has said that a landlord can evict his tenant if he wishes to build a pooja room or a guest room to accommodate visiting married daughters and sons, a landlord was denied this bona fide right
NEW DELHI: While the Delhi high court has said that a landlord can evict his tenant if he wishes to build a pooja room or a guest room to accommodate visiting married daughters and sons, a landlord here was denied this bona fide right by the rent control tribunal and then the HC.
A landlord wanted to evict a tenant who has been occupying the ground floor of his spacious house in the posh Jangpura area since 1973. While the current market rent of the premises stands at Rs15,000 a month, this tenant has been paying the landlord the old rent amount — Rs500.
The tenant then shifted his family to Ludhiana and also purchased a sprawling farm house in Delhi, but refused to vacate from the landlord’s house. The landlord has been living with his ailing wife in a one bed room premises on the first floor of the said house.
The landlord then approached the rent control tribunal to get the tenant to vacate the house. Even though he established that the tenant now owned a house and a farm house of his own and he now needed a pooja room for himself and a guest room for his married daughter and sons living abroad, the rent control tribunal rejected the landlord’s plea.
Dejected, the landlord then moved the HC to challenge the rent controller’s order.
But recalling a supreme court judgment in the case of a landlord Malpe Vishwanath Acharya from Maharashtra, the HC quashed the order.
Giving a boost to harassed landlords, the HC held that “the rent control act was enacted by the legislature to protect the interests of the tenants”.
“This enactment was considered necessary in view of the paucity of accommodation in a city like Delhi. The purpose of the act was not to give a tool in the hands of tenants to trouble the landlords,” a bench of Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra said.
However, “the purpose is not to give a tool in the hands of tenants to exploit the landlords. That is why, the legislation categorically provides under section 14(1) (h) that if the tenant acquires residential accommodation, the landlord can evict him. It is settled law that merely non mentioning of the provisions of law, is not a fatal defect and the court can take note of correct provision of law and give relief”, justice Dhingra added.
b_rakesh@dnaindia.net
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