New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India has held that a tenant cannot dictate to a landlord which accommodation should be treated as suitable for the landlord’s bona fide requirement, nor can the tenant insist that the landlord start a business from some other premises suggested by the tenant. The Court emphasized that, in revisional jurisdiction, microscopic scrutiny of pleadings and evidence to reverse concurrent findings of two courts on bona fide need is impermissible unless the jurisdiction exercised by the lower courts is ex facie without authority.
A Bench comprising Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Vijay Bishnoi delivered the decision while allowing a civil appeal filed by Rajani Manohar Kuntha & Ors., challenging the judgment of the Bombay High Court which had set aside concurrent decrees of eviction passed by the Trial Court and the First Appellate Court.
The case concerned a suit seeking eviction of a non-residential accommodation, described as No. 4, situated on a plot of land bearing CTS No. 425, 12th Lane, Kamathipura, Nagpada, Mumbai. The suit was filed by the plaintiff for the bona fide requirement of his daughter-in-law. The Trial Court decreed the suit, and the First Appellate Court confirmed the decree. However, the High Court set aside these concurrent judgments in the exercise of its revisional jurisdiction.
The plaintiff sought eviction of commercial premises situated on the ground floor and occupied by the defendant. The pleadings and evidence demonstrated that the need for the ground-floor premises for commercial use was bona fide, as concurrently found by both the Trial Court and the First Appellate Court. The other premises located on the second and third floors were residential in nature.
One issue that arose concerned a room situated on the ground floor, which the plaintiff had pleaded to be residential, though a commercial electricity connection had been obtained after the filing of the suit in 2016. The High Court appeared to rely on this aspect to doubt the bona fide nature of the requirement.
Another significant aspect was that the defendant proposed alternative accommodation and argued that the plaintiff should accept such alternative premises instead of seeking eviction from the suit property.
The Supreme Court found that the High Court, while reversing the concurrent findings of two courts holding the plaintiff’s daughter-in-law’s requirement to be bona fide, had undertaken a microscopic scrutiny of the pleadings and evidence and had impermissibly reversed those findings in revisional jurisdiction.
The Court held:
“In our view, such scrutiny in the exercise of revisional jurisdiction is not permitted unless the jurisdiction exercised by the two courts concurrently is ex facie without authority, which is not the case herein.”
On the issue of the ground-floor room for which a commercial connection was taken after the filing of the suit in 2016, the Supreme Court held that this, by itself, could not be a ground to nullify the bona fide requirement in the exercise of revisional jurisdiction.
On the issue of alternative accommodation proposed by the defendant, the Supreme Court made an important observation, holding:
“In addition, the defendant proposing alternative accommodation cannot dictate to the plaintiff-landlord the suitability of such accommodation so as to nullify the need, merely on the ground that other premises, allegedly residential in nature, had a commercial electricity connection taken during the pendency of the eviction proceedings.”
The Court further emphasized:
“In our view, this would not nullify the bona fide need of the daughter-in-law of the plaintiff.”
The Supreme Court referred to its earlier decision in Bhupinder Singh Bawa v. Asha Devi (2016) 10 SCC 209, reiterating that a tenant cannot dictate to the landlord regarding the suitability of accommodation or compel the landlord to start a business from premises suggested by the tenant.
Holding that the microscopic scrutiny undertaken by the High Court in revisional jurisdiction was ex facie without jurisdiction, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the impugned judgment of the High Court, and restored the judgments of the Trial Court and the First Appellate Court.
However, considering that the respondents had been occupying the suit premises for over half a century, the Supreme Court granted time until June 30, 2026, to vacate the premises, subject to the following conditions:
- Payment of arrears of rent within one month
- Payment of regular rent on a month-to-month basis
- Handing over peaceful vacant possession of the premises to the appellants on or before June 30, 2026
- Not parting with possession or creating any third-party rights in the premises
- Filing a usual undertaking within three weeks before the Registrar, Bombay High Court
The Supreme Court further clarified that non-filing of the undertaking or violation of any of the above conditions would entitle the landlord to execute the decree immediately, and the time granted for vacating the premises would not affect execution proceedings. Any defiance of the conditions may be treated as non-compliance with the Court’s order.
Case Title: Rajani Manohar Kuntha & Ors. v. Parshuram Chunilal Kanojiya & Ors., Civil Appeal arising out of SLP (C) No. 30407 of 2024
