Sivankutty vs Vikraman, Moncy, Deepa and Dinu

Pius C. Kuriakose, J.—Under challenge in this revision filed u/s 20 is the judgment of the Rent Control Appellate Authority confirming the finding entered by the Rent Control Court that the denial of title raised by the tenants in the rent control petition filed by the landlord seeking eviction is bona fide. The Rent Control Court in the first instance held that the denial of title is bona fide and dismissed the rent control petition. Against that, the landlord preferred an appeal to the Appellate Authority. The Appellate Authority set aside that finding and remanded the rent control petition once again to the Rent Control Court for conducting enquiry as contemplated under Sub-section (1) of Section 11 on the question as to whether the denial of title is bona fide. Enquiry was conducted and even thereafter the Rent Control Court reiterated the finding that the denial of title is bona fide. The present impugned judgment has been passed by the Appellate Authority in an appeal preferred by the landlord against the above finding of the Rent Control Court.

In this revision, various grounds are raised assailing the judgment of the Appellate Authority. Sri. C.B. Sreekumar learned Counsel for the revision Petitioner submitted that the Rent Control Court did not comply with the directions in the remand order passed by the Rent Control Appellate Authority. According to the learned Counsel, enquiry as contemplated by the proviso to Sub-section (1) of Section 11 was never conducted. The finding of the Appellate Authority is illegal , irregular and improper.

The submissions of Mr. Sreekumar were opposed by Sri. Kishore learned Counsel for the Respondents/tenants. Mr. Kishore submitted that this is a case where the landlord did file a suit for eviction on the strength of title. But, that suit was got dismissed as withdrawn and thereafter only he filed the rent control petition setting up a landlord- tenant relationship between him and the Respondents. It is in that rent control petition that the impugned judgment has been passed. According to Mr. Kishore, it is not possible to say on the basis of the evidence adduced by the parties that there is no bona fides in the denial of landlord''s title made by the Respondents.

We have anxiously considered the rival submissions addressed at the Bar. We have gone through the impugned judgment of the Appellate Authority and the order of the Rent Control Court. The judgment of a Division Bench of this Court in Aboobacker v. Girija 1995 (1) KLT 553 is one of the leading cases pertaining to the issue of denial by the tenant of the landlord''s title in rent control proceedings. What the Division Bench has laid down is that in order that the Rent Control Court denies relief on the basis that its jurisdiction is ousted, the court should be satisfied that there are strong or at least substantial grounds or sufficient materials in support of the plea and the chances of plea being upheld by the Civil Court are fairly on the higher side. As far as the materials available in the present case are concerned, the learned Rent Control Court and the Appellate Authority on a correct and critical analysis of the of the evidence on record, came to the conclusion that the landlord''s case of existence of a landlord-tenant relationship between him and the revision Petitioners is highly improbable. The statutory authorities have also noticed that the revision Petitioner had filed a suit for eviction, but had got the same dismissed as withdrawn without obtaining specific liberty from the court for instituting fresh proceedings. It is noticed that the landlord sought for withdrawal on the definite premises that there exists landlord tenant relationship between the parties. We feel that, on the materials on record it cannot be said that the tenant does not have a fair chance of success if the parties go to a Civil Court. We feel that the revision Petitioner should seek relief from a competent Civil Court.

In view of that, we dismissed this revision petition.