A tenant's failure to deposit assessed provisional rent mandates eviction under Section 13 of the Haryana Urban (Control of Rent & Eviction) Act, 1976.

JUDGMENT :

PANKAJ JAIN, J.

1. Landlord is in revision aggrieved of order passed by Appellate Authority, dated 29^th of July, 2023 whereby Appellate Authority allowed the appeal preferred by tenant setting aside judgment and order of provisional assessment of rent passed by Rent Controller and remanded the matter back to the Rent Controller directing him to re-assess the provisional rent.

2. For convenience, the parties hereinafter are referred to by their status, i.e. the petitioner as ‘landlord’ and respondent No.1 as ‘tenant’.

3. Landlord filed eviction petition under Section 13 of the Haryana Urban (Control of Rent & Eviction) Act, 1976 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Act of 1976’) seeking ejectment of tenant from demised premises in form of shop. As per landlord, the shop was let out to the tenant by way of rent agreement dated 12^th of October, 2017 at monthly rent of 18,000/-. As per the agreed terms, the rent was to be increased by 10% after every three years. Landlord claimed that the tenant illegally subletted the demised premises to respondent No.2 without his written consent. Landlord further claimed that the tenant was in arrears of rent for the month of September, 2020.

4. Rent Controller vide order dated 21st of December, 2022 assessed the provisional rent and directed payment thereof within a period of 15 days.

5. Respondent No.1/tenant did not tender rent as directed on 4^th of January, 2023. As per the tenant, he spent an amount of 10,00,000/- on medical expenses of father of the landlord. The said amount is required to be adjusted in the provisional rent. The Rent Controller vide order dated 5^th of January, 2023, ordered eviction of the tenant

6. Tenant preferred appeal.

7. Appellate Authority vide order dated 29^th of July, 2023, observed as under:

“21. If the analogy in the reported case is applied and taken into consideration, it comes out that the ground of ejectment taken in the present petition by the landlord was `non payment of arrears of rent for the month of September 2020' only. However, when stage of assessment of provisional rent had reached, 26 more months had elapsed. Thus, Rent Controller had assessed the provisional rent for 27 months. Although, rent for the said period was also due but as the ejectment was sought for `non payment of one month rent', no ejectment order could have been passed by the Rent Controller for non payment of those 26 months of rent as the said rent had accrued during pendency of petition and for which, a separate cause of action had arisen in favour of landlord. The ejectment order could have been passed by the Rent Controller, only, if the tenant had failed to make payment of arrears of rent which were outstanding on the date of filing of the rent petition. The rate of rent was admittedly Rs.18,000/- per month. Ld. Rent Controller himself had observed in the order of assessment of provisional rent that amount of Rs 20,000/- is liable to be adjusted, which was admitted by the landlord also. Thus, rent for September 2020 stood paid/adjusted and nothing was due as on the date of filing of the petition. Thus, ejectment order on the basis of non payment of arrears of rent for the period during pendency of the petition suffers from illegality. Reliance can be placed o law laid down in case of Vishva Sharva Talwar Malik Versus Devinder Singh Aulakh 2010(3) Law Herald 2067 (P&H) and Shri Devinder Singh versus Smt Raj Rani and ors 1977(2) RCR (Rent) 584. ”

8. The Appellate Authority accordingly allowed the appeal preferred by the tenant, setting aside the order of the