Case: S. B. Noronah Vs. Prem Kumari Khanna

3. A landlady let out her premises to another lady several years ago (1968) for a term and, thereafter, from time to time, continued the possession of the tenant on fresh lease and increase in rent. Every time there was homage to the law by grant of sanction by the Rent Controller under Section 21 ofthe Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958. (The Act, for short), as if the letting were of a residential accommodation. It is apparent that all these years an elitist `residentialis being run in the premises and that is the purpose expressly recited in all but the last lease deed of December, 1975. This lease recites blindly that ‘the leasee requires a suitable accommodation for residentialThe period of the lease having expired the landlady applied for summary eviction by application for execution—a novel procedure enjoyed by the landlords of this capital city which relieves them of the need even to file a suit for eviction. The tenant, whose expensive and lucrative school was about to be uprooted for want of a habitation, hunted for a legal plea to resist the threat of dispossession. Technicality is the unfailing resource of an Indian litigant and the ingenious defense, among others, was set up that because the application for eviction did not mention that the letting was ‘init was fatally flaw-some . Better pleas which merited serious consideration were over-ruled but this little infirmity in the pleading loomed large in the eyes of the Rent Controller who, for that reason alone, rejected the relief.4. The inevitable appeal to the Tribunal followed. An application for amendment of the pleading, by way of abundant coution, to make good the verbal deficiency was also made. Furious forensic battles ranged and the appellate tribunal as well as the High Court allowed the appeals, and the amendments, over-ruling the further plea of limitation for the application as on the date of the amendments. The worsted tenant has secured leave to appeal and there is an application for revocation of leave.

Court's reasoning:
14. Section 21 is the answer. The law seeks to persuade the owner of permises available for letting for a particular or limited period by giving him the special assurance that the expiry of that period the appointed agency will place the landlord in vacant possession. As stated earlier, the critical need was for residential, not non-residential housing. Therefore, Section 21 confines this special remedy to letting for residential uses only. Parliament had the wholesome fear that if the Section were not controlled by many conditions it might open the flood gates for wholesale circumvention of the rent control legislation by ingenious landlords exploiting the agonising need of houseless denizens.We must notice that Section 21 runs counter to the general scheme and, therefore, must be restricted severaly to its narrow sphere. Secondly, we must place accent only every condition which attracts the Section and if any one of them is absent the Section cannot apply and, therefore, cannot arm the landlord with a resistless eviction process. Thirdly, we must realise that the whole effect of Section 14 can be subverted by ritualistic enforcement of the conditions of sanction under Sce. 21 or mechanical grant of sanction therein. Section 21 overrides Section 14 precisely because it is otherwise hedged in with drastic limitation and safeguards itself against. When an application under Section 21 is filed by the landlord and/or tenant, the Controller must satisfy himself by such inquiry as he may make, about the compulsive requirements of that provision. If he makes a mindless order, the Court, when challenged at the time of execution, will go into the question as to whether the twin conditions for sanction have really been fulfilled. Of course, there will be a presumption in favour of the sanction being regular, but it will still be open to a party to make out his case that in fact and in truth the conditions which make for a valid sanction were not present. We do not agree with the statement of the law by the Delhi High Court striking a contrary note. In this context, we may make special reference to Kasturicase, a decision of the Delhi High Court reported in 1976 RCJ p. 582. It is true as Misra in that case, following earlier decisions has observed that the provisions of Section 21 are designed to meet the problem of shortage of housing in Delhi. If the landlord does not need the premises for a limited period, Section 21 permits him to lease it out during that period. Without the facility of Section 21 the landlord might have preferred to keep the premises vacant, but that does not mean that the law surrenders itself to this landlord and releases him from all conditions. That is why the need for sanction and the mandatory conditions for such sanction are specified in the Section. It is altogether wrong to import the idea that the tenant having taken advantage of induction into the premises pursuant to the permission, he cannot challenge the legality of the permission. As between unequals the law steps in and as against statutes there is no estoppel, especially where collusion and fraud are made out and high purpose is involved.It is an old maxim that estoppels are odious, although considerable inroad into this maxim has been made by modern law. Even so, `a judgements obtained by fraud or collusion, even, it seems a judgment of the house of Lords, may be treated as aLaws of England, Vol. 16—fourth edition para 1553) the point is that the sanction granted under Section 21, if it has been procured by fraud for or collusion, cannot withstand invalidity because, otherwise, high public policy will be given as hostage to successful collusion.21. Law that non-performs stultifies the rule of law and so it is that we stress the need for strict compliance. Or else, the sanction is non est. Collusion between the strong and the weak cannot confer validity, where the mandatory prescriptions of the law are breached or betrayed. We have said enough to make the point that it is open to the tenant in the present case to plead and prove that the sanction under Section 21 is invalid, and if it is void the executing Court is not debarred from holding so.We, therefore, hold on the first poiint that no question of amendment arises in the present case and the application before the Controller did not suffer from any deficiency. On the second point we hold that it is perfectly open to the Controller to examine whether the sanction under Section 21 is a make-believe, vitiated by fraud and Collusion.