Date:27/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/27/stories/2008122759070300.htm

New Delhi

ARC order set aside, tenant ordered to vacate premises

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has set aside a judgment by an Assistant Rent Controller (ARC) here upholding the submission of a tenant that his landlady did not require more space in her premises to provide separate rooms for her growing children because her income did not support her claim.

The ARC had allowed the tenant, Omprakash, to stay in a portion in the premises which the landlady had rented out to him, saying that the landlady’s argument that she required the rented portion to accommodate her two children, for her visiting relatives and a caretaker to look after her teenaged children did not hold water.

The landlady is a Class IV employee at a Government hospital here.

Her husband died a few years ago. He was a Class I employee at the same hospital. The landlady later got a job on compassionate grounds.

‘False submission’

The tenant argued before the ARC that the landlady was making a false submission that she required a caretaker to look after her children when she was out on job and that she wanted to build bedrooms and a study for her children and to accommodate the caretaker.

The ARC dismissed her argument, giving credence to the submission of the tenant that, being a Class IV employee, her income was not so much that she would afford the standard of living of a middle class family.

The landlady then challenged the ARC’s decision in the High Court, submitting that society might assess one’s status on the basis of the quality of his or her employment but the law treats every citizen equally. Dismissing the rationale of the judgment of the Rent Controller, Justice S.N. Dhingra said that our society might believe the prejudices expressed by the tenant about his landlady but the law did not permit it. “Under the law, every citizen has the right to live a dignified and healthy life.”