Court can’t assume role of adviser to landlord: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, October 25

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has rapped a local court for telling a landlord how to use his property. Justice Manjari Nehru Kaul of the High Court has asserted that a court cannot, and should not, try to assume the role of an adviser to the landlord.

The assertion by Justice Kaul came in the case of a retired defence personnel-landlord dragged into litigation for 25 years. The Bench, during the course of hearing, was told that the annexe portion of a house in Sector 15 was let out in 1996 for a year on a monthly rent of Rs 2,500, exclusive of electricity charges. The tenant was to vacate the premises in accordance with their oral agreement in July 1997.

A rent petition was instituted before the Rent Controller in October 1997. After years of litigation and legal rigmarole, the Rent Controller ordered the tenant’s eviction from the premises by holding that the landlord’s requirement came across as genuine and bona fide. The order was passed upon consideration of the material on record and the evidence led by the parties.

Reversing the findings recorded by the Rent Controller, the appellate authority held that the landlord’s personal requirement was neither genuine nor bona fide, resulting in the filing of the revision petition before the Bench.

As the matter came up for hearing, Justice Kaul ordered the setting aside of the impugned order passed by the appellate authority, while restoring the order dated May 27, 2012, passed by the Rent Controller. Justice Kaul also granted the respondent-tenant time till January 31, 2023, to hand over the vacant possession to the landlord.

Before parting with the order, Justice Kaul asserted that the court would like to observe that the tenant dragged retired defence personnel, who had constructed the house out of his life savings, into protracted litigation for 25 years. He could not live in peace ever since the tenant refused to vacate the premises.

Justice Kaul added that it would not be remiss to mention that the appellate authority, while reversing the well-reasoned judgment of the Rent Controller, had, in its overenthusiasm, chosen to render advice to the landlord as to how to use his own property. “A court cannot and should not try to assume the role of an adviser to the landlord, as to how the property should be put to use, regardless of the size of the premises,” Justice Kaul concluded.