Surender v. Nand Lal
Background
The appellant, landlord of shops in Bahadurgarh, Haryana, sought eviction of three tenants under the Haryana Urban (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act, 1973, claiming the shops were in a dilapidated and unsafe condition. The Rent Controller, the Appellate Authority, and the High Court (in revision) all rejected the eviction petitions after weighing competing expert evidence and concluding the premises were not proven to be dilapidated. The respondent tenants did not appear before the Supreme Court despite being given extra time to file written submissions.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court, after itself reviewing the entire record in the respondents' absence, held that the concurrent factual findings of the three lower forums were based on a plausible assessment of the expert evidence and were not perverse, so the High Court's limited revisional jurisdiction had correctly declined to interfere. The Court also rejected the appellant's argument based on an alleged subsequent event (a collapsed "chhajja"/overhang in 2012), since no record showed this had actually been raised before the lower appellate forums. The appeals were dismissed, but the Court expressly permitted the landlord to file a fresh eviction petition if the premises' present condition had genuinely deteriorated, since that would constitute a new cause of action.
Lesson Learnt
The Supreme Court will not disturb concurrent findings of fact by multiple lower courts/tribunals unless they are shown to be perverse; however, dismissal of one eviction petition does not bar a landlord from filing a fresh petition later if the property's condition genuinely changes, since that creates a new, independent cause of action.