Question: Our father had purchased three houses together in a colony, more than 50 years ago. Two on the ground floor, in which we were already living there on rent. And One house is on top of these two houses. A tenant family was on rent, the time we purchased it. This tenant is no more and his wife lives with her elder son now. Her daughter is married & settled. And though both of her sons own houses in Dehradun. Her younger son is living with his family in our house and not vacating it.
Our family has extended and we need this house to be vacated urgently. According to the tenant this house is an allotment house and can not be vacated. Is there any new law supporting a landlord in this kind of situation? Please help and guide.
Question from: Uttarakhand
You should file an application before the Prescribed Authority under Section 21 of U.P. Urban Building Act [Act 13, 1972, for release of the building on the ground of bonafide need. The tenant owned a house in the same city. She has an alternate accommodation hence, she has to vacate this house.
Your family is extending therefore, you have a “bonafide need” of the house which is currently on letting. In Nootan Kumar vs. Additional District Judge, Banda (1993) 22 ALR 437 (SC) the Supreme Court has held that the landlord has to prove his bonafide need in order to get his property released.
Explanation 1 of Section 21 of the U.P. Urban Building Act [Act 13, 1972] explicitly mandates that if the tenant has a house in the same city then he has to vacate the building. The explanation is read as:
“where the tenant or any member of his family has built or has otherwise acquired in a vacant state or has got vacated after acquisition a residential building in the same city, municipality, notified area or town area, no objection by the tenant against an application under this subsection shall be entertained”
Explanation 1 of Section 21 of the U.P. Urban Building Act [Act 13, 1972]
Your tenant will not assail or challenge your ground of vacating the building on “bonafide need” because her son owns a house in the same city. In the following case the Allahabad High Court has held that if the tenant had a house, at any point of time, in the same city then he cannot challenge the bonafide need of the landlord.
Section 21(1)(a) Explanation 1 of UP Act 13, 1972 prescribes for the bonafide need of the landlord. Where the tenant purchased a plot, constructed flats on it and sold them later, it clearly shows that alternative accommodation was available to him. Therefore, it is not open for the tenant to challenge the bonafide need and comparative hardship of the landlord by taking advantage of the fact that the landlord owns any other house besides premises in dispute.
Kamla Tripathi vs. Kanchan Aggarwal & anr. 2007 (1) ALJ 352
Length of tenancy is not a ground to challenge the bonafide need of the landlord. In Shamshad Ahmad and ors. vs. Tilak Raj Bajaj 2009 (1) UAD 64 (SC) the Supreme Court has held that the landlord has the right to release the building in his favour on the bonafide need even though the longevity of tenancy of fifty years.
You have a good ground to release the building and evict the tenant on the ground of the landlord’s bonafide need.