Geeta Gupta v. Ramesh Chandra Dwivedi & Ors.
Background
The appellant bought a commercial property in Kanpur in 1994 that included premises earlier let out by her sellers to one Dhruv Narayan Tripathi. The first respondent claimed he had been inducted as a sub-tenant of that property by Tripathi (acting as the original owners' power-of-attorney holder) back in 1975 and had been in continuous possession and paying rent ever since. When a government authority sought to allot the premises to someone else on the basis that it had fallen "vacant" under the rent control law, the District Magistrate instead found the first respondent to be a lawful tenant, a finding the Allahabad High Court upheld. The appellant challenged this before the Supreme Court, arguing Tripathi had no authority to create that tenancy and that she had been deprived of any benefit from the property for 27 years.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that, since the original owners never objected to Tripathi inducting the first respondent as tenant between 1975 and 1994, and the first respondent was already in possession with the (implied) consent of the owners before the cut-off date of 5 July 1976, he became a protected, "deemed" tenant under Section 14 of the U.P. Rent Control Act. The appellant's cited precedents were found not to apply to these facts. The appeal was therefore dismissed, meaning the appellant cannot evict the tenant through this writ route and must instead pursue eviction, if she wants it, through the specific statutory procedure under Sections 20/21 of the Act. However, to protect the appellant's interest in the meantime, the Court directed the tenant to clear any rent arrears within six weeks and keep paying rent regularly, and directed that any future eviction proceedings she files be given priority given the long delay she has already suffered.
Lesson Learnt
A tenancy created years earlier by someone acting (even informally) on the landlord's behalf can become legally protected if the landlord never objects to it for a long period: a property buyer inherits not just the asset but also any such entrenched tenancy, and must use the correct statutory eviction process rather than expect a writ petition to remove a protected tenant.