SC evicts tenant, asks to hand over cinema hall to owner after 63 yrs of legal battle

Hindustan Times

24-04-2025

New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Thursday brought "curtains down" on a 63-year-old tenancy dispute by ordering the legal heir of the tenant to hand over the possession of the "Mansarovar Palace" cinema hall in Prayagraj to the kin of the real owner.
'We finally bring the curtains down on this long drawn out litigation concerning the cinema hall. For the reasons stated above, the appeal is allowed and the judgment and order of the high court dated January 9, 2013 in Writ… of 1999 is set aside," a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and K V Viswanathan said.
The court granted time till December 31, 2025 to the respondents to vacate the premises and hand over a "peaceful possession" of the suit premises.
The same would be "subject to the respondents filing the usual undertaking and clearing all arrears, if any, of rent/use and occupation charges" within four weeks from the date of the verdict.
The legal tussle saw two rounds of litigation and finally Atul Kumar Aggarwal, the legal heir of late Muralidhar Aggarwal, won the case and as a result legal heirs of tenant late Mahendra Pratap Kakan will now have to hand over the possession of the cinema hall.
The top court set aside a 2013 decision of the Allahabad High Court, which dismissed the eviction plea of the owner's family and upheld an appellate authority's decision allowing the tenant to continue possession of the cinema hall.
The dispute stems from a 1952 lease agreement under which the tenant, represented by the late Ram Agya Singh, occupied the cinema premises.
Murlidhar purchased the property in 1962 and filed multiple eviction suits over the years, citing bona fide need for the property.
Prior litigation under the Uttar Pradesh Rent Control Act of 1947 ended in favour of the tenant, but a fresh application for eviction was filed in 1975 under the newer 1972 Rent Control Act.
The prescribed authority initially allowed the eviction, citing genuine personal need.
However, this was reversed on appeal, prompting a challenge in the High Court and, eventually, the Supreme Court.
Allowing the plea of the owners in the second round, Justice Viswanthan, penning a 24-page judgement, emphasised that the bona fide requirement of a landlord must be "liberally construed."
The verdict highlighted that the cinema premises were needed to support the landlord's family, particularly Atul Kumar, the disabled son of Murlidhar, who had no independent means of livelihood.
The top court junked the tenant's arguments that the landlord's family was involved in other businesses or had adequate income.
The verdict said the claims were unsubstantiated and irrelevant to the legal requirement for proving genuine need.