Rent law for uncared wife?s cause?

STATE RENT laws give the liberty to a landlord to seek release of his rented premises from a tenant on the ground that he needs those premises for his own use. The prescribed authority under the rent law, if convinced that the landlord?s need is bona fide, can release the premises to the landlord. The tenant has then to get out.

STATE RENT laws give the liberty to a landlord to seek release of his rented premises from a tenant on the ground that he needs those premises for his own use. The prescribed authority under the rent law, if convinced that the landlord’s need is bona fide, can release the premises to the landlord. The tenant has then to get out.

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Taking benefit of this provision in the UP Rent Act, a Kanpur-based house-owner applied to the prescribed authority, seeking the release of one of his tenanted premises on the plea that he needed it for his own bona fide need.
While the application was pending before the prescribed authority at Kanpur, both the landlord and tenant, in question, opted for a compromise, under which the tenant took the stand that he had an alternative accommodation and that the need of the landlord was bona fide. Acting on the compromise, the prescribed authority passed an order releasing the rented house in landlord’s favour.

However, the story did not end there. The tenant’s wife, Dorothey Nathenial sought restoration of the case for a fresh adjudication. Her complaint was that the husband was a drunkard, and taking advantage of his bad habit, the landlord got the said compromise in favour of the release order signed by her husband. “I was not at all aware of the ‘collusive’ order passed by the prescribed authority, and as soon as I came to know of it, I had moved the restoration plea,” she urged.

However, the prescribed authority remained unmoved. Not Dorothey Nathenial, but her husband was the tenant, and so, she had no locus standi to challenge the release order, said the prescribed authority.

Dorothey knocked the doors of the Allahabad High Court in its writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, and her petition was decided by Justice SU Khan (2006(1) AWC 927). A ruling delivered by the Supreme Court in 2005 in the case of BPA Anand turned the whole legal battle in favour of Dorothey.
In BPA Anand’s case, the apex court had laid down that even a tenant’s ‘deserted wife’, being in occupation of the leased premises, had the right to contest the landlord’s eviction suit against her tenant-husband.

First of all, held Justice SU Khan, the release application filed by the landlord in this case could not have been decided by the prescribed authority on the basis of the compromise between the landlord and tenant. Despite the compromise, the prescribed authority was required, under the UP Rent Act, to record his ‘satisfaction’ if the need of the landlord for his tenanted house was really genuine or not, held the judge.

Drawing support from the aforesaid apex court ruling, Justice SU Khan observed that Dorothey filed an objection before the prescribed authority, saying that she intended to continue as an occupant of the house. This revealed that the relationship between the husband and wife was ‘quite strained’.

“It seemed that the husband was ‘not at all bothered’ about his wife and the children. In view of this, the benefit available to a ‘deserted wife’ under the aforesaid Supreme Court case law, would also extend to Dorothy in this case, even though she may not qualify to be a ‘deserted’ wife,” ruled the judge.
Accordingly Justice SU Khan directed the prescribed authority to rehear Dorothey and only then decide afresh the landlord’s release application. At the same time, the judge took care to adjust the ‘equities’ in between the parties, in tune with the principles laid down by the apex court in 2004(2) ARC 64 and AIR 1996 SC 2410.

The disputed house, said Justice Khan, consisted of two rooms, store, kithcen, courtyard and toilet. It is located in the most expensive city of Kanpur. The long existing rent of Rs. 17.50 for such a house is ‘virtually no rent’, the judge remarked, while directing that Dorothey would pay a monthly rent of Rs. 750 to the landlord. For the time being, the ball is back to the court of the prescribed authority at Kanpur, and optimism is all that which would keep Dorthey’s spirits up.