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M/S Espire Infolabs Pvt Ltd v. Sadhana Foundation

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 1343Decided 9 Dec 2019
Civil Appeal No. 9265 of 2019
Justice S. Abdul Nazeer · Justice Deepak Gupta

Background

A landlord sought rent of about Rs. 18.4 lakh per month for the period November 2015 to January 2017, relying on a 2013 lease deed. The corporate tenant argued that a later, registered 2015 lease deed governed instead, fixing rent at only Rs. 7.5 lakh per month, and that it was additionally entitled to offset the rent against roughly Rs. 9 crore it had spent fitting out the premises. The Rent Controller and the Punjab and Haryana High Court had provisionally fixed rent at Rs. 7.5 lakh per month pending a full trial of the dispute.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found several genuinely disputed questions of fact, which lease deed actually governed, whether the person who signed the 2015 lease deed on the landlord trust's behalf was validly authorised to do so, and how much the tenant had actually spent, none of which could be resolved without a full evidentiary trial before the Rent Controller. Rather than ruling on these merits itself, the Court balanced the interim equities by reducing the provisional rent to Rs. 3.75 lakh per month, required the tenant to furnish a Rs. 3 crore surety to protect the landlord's interests, and directed the Rent Controller to finally decide the underlying eviction proceedings within six months.

Lesson Learnt

When the real facts of a landlord-tenant rent dispute are genuinely contested, courts may set a provisional interim rent to balance both parties' interests while the underlying case goes to trial: this is a stop-gap measure, not a final ruling on who is actually right.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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