Rent Lawyer: The High Court in Rent Revision cannot re-appreciate the issue of landlord and tenant relationship; SC.

Supreme Court of India

Justice U U Lalit and Justice Vineet Saran

The SC holds that in Rent Control Revision, the High Court cannot re-appreciate the facts or evidence. The High Court in RCR does not act as a first or second court of appeal. But the High Court power in RCR is confined to find out legality, regularity and propriety of the order impugned, even though the High Court power in RCR is wider than the power u/s 115 CPC.

The SC {Thankamony Amma & Ors. v. Omana Amma N. & Ors.} sets aside the Judgment of the High Court in the present case, as High Court in RCR re-appreciated the evidence and came to the conclusion that there was no landlord and tenant relationship between the parties - contrary to concurrent findings of the lower Court and appellate Court.  It was also held by the SC that the findings of the Courts below cannot be held to be perverse in any way. It was further held by the SC that HC in Rent Revision cannot decide whether the relationship of landlord-tenant existed or not as it is a jurisdictional fact. In the present case the HC had set aside the eviction order for bonafide requirement for want of landlord-tenant relationship- which Judgment came to be set aside by the SC.