Power conferred on the High Court by Article 227 is a power of superintendence and not a power of judicial review: High Court

  

A Single bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar dismissed the  present  petition preferred in pursuance of the eviction petition  instituted  by the respondent - Mandhir Sachdeva, seeking eviction of the petitioner  Kushal Anand from the premises located at New Rajender Nagar, Delhi invoking, for the said purpose, clauses (d) and (h) of the proviso to Section 14(1) of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958.

The Single Judge bench was of the considered view that exercising of jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, does not confer appellate jurisdiction. In respect of the same, the instant petition was dismissed on being devoid of merits. 

 Factual background of the case was such that the tenant premises were allotted to one Jai Singh Sachdeva, the grandfather of the respondent, by the Ministry of Rehabilitation. Jai Singh Sachdeva inducted Surinder Nath Anand, the now deceased husband of the petitioner Kushal Anand, as a tenant in the first floor of the tenanted premises in 1960. The tenancy was for residential purposes.

 

 

It was the case of the respondent as averred in the Eviction petition that after Jai Singh Sachdeva expired on December 27, 1968, his parental uncle Jagdish Singh, as one of the co-owners who had succeeded to the ownership of the tenanted premises as a legal heir of Jai Singh Sachdeva, terminated the tenancy of the petitioner through notice dated January 6, 1970, with effect from January 31, 1970. 

The eviction petition was allowed by the Additional Rent Controller under Section 14(1)(d) as well as Section 14(1)(h) of the DRC Act, vide judgment dated 18th June, 2020.  

In pursuance of the same, the appellant appealed to the Rent Controller via appeal. However, the same was dismissed.

Aggrieved by the same, the petitioner invoked the jurisdiction of this Court under Article 227 of the Indian Constitution. 

After hearing the submissions of the parties, the Court noted that it was exercising jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, which does not confer appellate jurisdiction. The court is only required to examine whether the authority which has passed the impugned order has, in doing so, exposed itself to supervisory correction, the Court noted.

 

Further on the contention of the petitioner that the alternate properties possessed by Surinder Nath Anand, on the basis of which Section 14(1)(h) of the DRC Act had been invoked by the respondent, had been acquired by him prior to the petitioner succeeding to his estate and could not, therefore, be regarded as a residence acquired by the petitioner on the basis of which an eviction petition under Section 14(1)(h)) could be maintained, this Court in relation to the same noted  that the  submission which was never advanced by the petitioner before the court or forum whose order is assailed under Article 227, cannot be raised before the High Court either. 

In furtherance of the same it was also observed that the power conferred on the High Court by Article 227 is a power of superintendence and not a power of judicial review. An implicit corollary is that the manner of exercise of its jurisdiction by the court or forum below cannot be gauged on the basis of submissions which were never advanced before it. 

On the next  contention of the petitioner that he was residing in the tenanted premises within a span of six months prior to the institution of the eviction petition and that, therefore, the finding, to the contrary, of the RCT, was incorrect, in view of the same the Court noted that that the RCT after duly appreciating the evidence had reached to the conclusion that there was no evidence that the petitioner was residing at A-42, Kailash Colony, New Delhi and there was no evidence to indicate that she had ever shifted to the tenanted premises.

 In light of these observations, the Court dismissed the instant petition on account of being meritless.

 

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(With input from news agency language)

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