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High Court Of Delhi
RAM CHANDER - Appellant
Versus
GOKAL CHAND - Respondent
Decided On : 12/06/1976
RENT CONTROL - Leave to Contest Eviction - Circumstances for Grant - Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 - Ss. 14(1)(e), 14a, 25b - Interpretation.
Fact of the Case:
Tenants challenged the orders of the Controller declining leave to contest eviction applications filed by landlords under the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958.
Finding of the Court:
1. The provisions of sub-sections (4) and (5) of Section 25b of the Act are clear as to the circumstances in which leave to contest should be granted and do not admit of any controversy. 2. A bare denial would not ordinarily entitle the defendant in an action under Order 37 or a tenant in an application for ejectment which may be within the mischief of Section 25b to leave to contest. 3. The tenant would be entitled to leave if his affidavit discloses grounds, whether of fact or of law, which if substantiated at the trial, would disentitle the landlord from obtaining an order of eviction. 4. The function of the Controller, therefore, when called upon to consider if leave should or should not be granted, is to determine if the grounds disclosed averments of fact and of law which could eventually disentitle the landlord to relief. 5. The expression residential accommodation in Section 14a(1) of the Act denotes the purpose for which the premises was built, the use to which it was intended to be put and the category to which it belongs. 6. A landlord can eject a tenant under Section 14a(1) only if the landlord is required to vacate Government accommodation on the ground that he owns in the Union territory of Delhi a residential accommodation . 7. A landlord who must vacate Government accommodation by virtue of his retirement or transfer cannot take advantage of the provisions of Section 14a(1) merely because he obtained an order of cancellation of his allotment.
Issues: 1. Circumstances in which leave to contest eviction should be granted under Section 25b of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958. 2. Interpretation of the expression residential accommodation in Section 14a(1) of the Act. 3. Entitlement of an allottee of Government accommodation to evict his tenant under Section 14a(1) where the allotment was liable to be cancelled due to retirement or transfer.
Ratio Decidendi: 1. The provisions of sub-sections (4) and (5) of Section 25b of the Act are clear and do not admit of any controversy. A bare denial would not ordinarily entitle the defendant or tenant to leave to contest. The tenant would be entitled to leave if his affidavit discloses grounds, whether of fact or of law, which if substantiated at the trial, would disentitle the landlord from obtaining an order of eviction. 2. The expression residential accommodation in Section 14a(1) of the Act denotes the purpose for which the premises was built, the use to which it was intended to be put and the category to which it belongs. It is used in contra-distinction to a shop or a house of business. 3. A landlord can eject a tenant under Section 14a(1) only if the landlord is required to vacate Government accommodation on the ground that he owns in the Union territory of Delhi a residential accommodation . A landlord who must vacate Government accommodation by virtue of his retirement or transfer cannot take advantage of the provisions of Section 14a(1) merely because he obtained an order of cancellation of his allotment.
Final Decision: The petitions were disposed of accordingly.
( 1 ) THESE petitions, inter alia, raise a common question as to the circumstances in which leave should be granted to a tenant under sub-section (5) of Section 25b of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 (for short, the Act) Certain subsidiary questions also arise in individual petitions, which are common to some of them.
( 2 ) AS is well-known the Act is a part of the rent control legislation enacted in Delhi, as indeed in the rest of I he country, to deal with an extraordinary situation that arose soon after the outbreak of the Second World War because of increasing pressure on urban immovable property. The situation was further aggravated in the years that followed on account of increasing population explosion and the influx of large number of displaced persons from the territories, now forming part of Pakistan, in the wake of the partition of India and the consequent pressure on land in urban areas. The rent control legislation, throughout the country was intended to strike a reasonable balance between the requirements of the tenants for adequate protection against the aggressive design of greedy landlords to evict the tenants or to increase the rates of rent to an exorbitant limit and the need to assure to the landlords, whose normal legal rights were sought to be restricted, the minimum right to receive the agreed rent, lawful increase of it and to evict the tenants who may be guilty of misconduct and for other grounds within certain circumscribed limits. These measures were continued after the promulgation of the Constitution of India with an even greater bias in favour of the tenants, who, by and large, represented the weaker segment of society as compared to the urban propertied class, as part of large scale social legislation having its genesis in the need to bring about social and economic justice through legislative action, inter alia, by the redistribution of wealth on an equitable basis, elimination of exploitation in all forms and establishment of a truly egalitarian social order.
( 3 ) AMONG the grounds which could justify the eviction of a tenant was clause (e) of proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 14 of the Act, according to which the tenant may be evicted from the premises "let for residential purposes" if such premises were "bona fide" required by the landlord for occupation as a residence for himself or for any member of his family dependent on him provided the landlord "has no other reasonably suitable residential accommodation". Explanation to clause (e) defines the expression "premises let for residential purposes" as including "any premises which having been let for use as a residence or, without the consent of the landlord, used incidentally for commercial or other purposes". By the Delhi Rent Control (Amendment) Ordinance (No. 24 of 1975), 1975 (for short, the Ordinance) the Act was amended with a three-fold object : one was the much needed protection to the heirs of a statutory tenant after the death of such a tenant. The other was a sequal to Government decision to deprive an allottee of Government accommodation if he owned a residential accommodation either in his own name or in the name of his wife or dependent child. The third was to introduce a summary procedure for trial of applications in which eviction was sought either on the ground of requisition to vacate Government accommodation on account of ownership of residential accommodation or on the ground that the owner landlord bona fide required the premises in terms of clause (e ). To achieve the last two objects Section 14a and Sections 25a, 25b and 25c were added to the Act. Section 14a conferred on a landlord the right to evit a tenant, if, being a person in occupation of any residential premises allotted to him by the Central Government or such other authorities, he was required to vacate such residential accommodation on the ground of his ownership of residential accommodation in the Union territory of Delhi. Section 25b
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