Delhi High Court: A Division Bench of D.N. Patel, CJ and Prateek Jalan, J., imposed costs on the petitioner while rejecting his petition to grant waiver of rent for all tenants and related reliefs.
In the present petition, following are the reliefs sought:
- Waiver of Rent for all the tenants
- Constitution of ‘Rent Resolution Commission’,
- Constitution of ‘Rent Auxiliary Fund’
- Issue directions to the Delhi Police to make amendments to the standard operating procedure where, if their Control Room officer receives any distress call on ‘100 or 112’ from a tenant or a landlord, as the case may be, the officer shall connect the caller, after receiving her consent, to ‘Rent Resolution Commission’
- One time amnesty to the landlords or tenants, and
- setting aside order dated 17th May, 2020 passed by respondent 1/UOI
Essence of the petition
Petition asks landlords to forgo consideration for their premises already retained by the tenant.
The powers/discretion for waiving of such consideration (rent) vests first with the landlords, who are contractually entitled to the same. This Court will be extremely slow in interfering with the contractual terms which have been entered into by the parties to the contract.
Court declined to entertain the prayer for waiver of the rent and added that,
It ought to be kept in mind that Court cannot do charity at the cost of others. Charity beyond law is an injustice to others.
If the landlord is entitled to receive the rent/consideration in accordance with law as per the contractual agreement entered between the parties concerned, then, the Court cannot, by a general order of the nature sought by the petitioner, waive such amount.
Rent Resolution Commission
In Court’s opinion it sees no reason to constitute ‘Rent Resolution Commission’ and provide for all the mechanism of appointment of the Members thereof, procedure for removal thereof, fixation of salary thereof etc.
Moreover such issues are policy oriented and not for the Court to decided as the same lies in the legislative/executive domain.
Further the Court added that, it cannot pass general directions that would result in waiver of contractual or property rights or establishment of adjudicatory bodies.
Fallacy in the Case
Petitioner seeking an order placing the burden of proof on the landlord with regard to the financial situation of the tenant is the fallacy in the matter.
Further, petitioner was unable to justify as to how a landlord can be asked to provide such evidence which may not be within his/ her knowledge at all. The petitioner has sought to postulate a scheme based upon his own understanding, but without sufficient thought as to the modalities or the consequences of the proposal.
One time amnesty to landlords or tenants
For grant of one time amnesty requires various factors to be considered and the same will be a policy decision to be taken by the Government authorities.
Court is not the maker of the law, and cannot draft a brand new law, except where the law is silent or where some lacuna is to be filled up.
Presumption
It has been presumed that the tenants alone are suffering from financial hardship or from the economic consequences of pandemic and lockdown, however, it ought to be kept in mind that even the landlords can be financially dependent on the rent.
Thus, whenever a landlord expects eviction of the premises on the basis of non-payment of the rent, in such eventuality, the Court has to appreciate the proved facts of that particular case.
Thus in view of the above the Court does not see any reason to interfere with the order dated 17th May, 2020 passed by UOI.
Concluding its analysis for the above matter, Court stated that the present petition does not appears to be a public interest litigation, but it is publicity interest litigation.
Proposals made by the petitioner are ill- conceived, as he does not appear to have thought about their practicability or their effect on other stakeholders.
Cost of Rs 10,000 have been imposed on the petition for abuse of process of the Court and the said amount will be utilized for COVID relief and welfare measures. [Gaurav Jain v. UOI, 2020 SCC OnLine Del 652 , decided on 15-06-2020]