High court sets aside rent controller order citing misuse of Delhi Rent Control Act
Justice Anup Jairam Bhambani, in a recent order, was dealing with petitions against the orders of the additional rent controller (ARC) that dismissed eviction petitions filed by owners of properties in Sadar Bazar.
The owners are now based in the UK and Dubai and sought eviction of their tenants, but their plea was dismissed by the ARC, which ruled in favour of the tenants.
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"This court is compelled to record that while manning the rent control roster, it found that cases abound where very well-off tenants enjoying financial prosperity persist in unjustly occupying premises for decades on end, paying a pittance for rent, while in the process their landlords are forced into impecunious and desperate circumstances, resulting from egregious misuse of an anachronistic piece of legislation, namely the Delhi Rent Control Act," HC noted in its verdict.
Allowing the plea of the petitioners to evict the tenants, the court saw merit in the grounds cited by the petitioners for seeking eviction of tenants from the premises on the ground that they run two restaurants in London and require the space for expanding the business in India. The ARC denied the eviction, noting that the petitioners were settled in and were running their businesses in London and Dubai, and did not require the premises for their "subsistence or survival," and that their bona fide requirement did not amount to being an "actual need.
" It also said the premises were too small to run a sit-in restaurant from.
Taking a dim view of such reasoning, HC set aside the ARC's eviction order and said, "the financial well-being of a landlord, or the financial ill-health of a tenant, were not relevant considerations while deciding an eviction petition."
It observed that whether "they can run a full-fledged, sit-down restaurant or a smaller food take-away joint is entirely the petitioners' prerogative; and the bona fides of their requirement cannot be discounted based merely on the learned ARC's assessment of whether a food business can be run from the subject premises. This view taken by the ARC is flawed."
In 2019, the High Court rejected a constitutional challenge to certain provisions of the rent control law governing parts of Delhi. An appeal against the same is pending before the Supreme Court. |
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