The notice said subletting and so did the order — an industrial plot eviction survives Article 227

Justice Aarti Sathe declines to interfere with an eviction from a Wagle Industrial Estate plot, distinguishing a tax case in which the authorities had changed grounds between the show cause notice and the final order.

A sole proprietorship held an industrial plot at the Wagle Industrial Estate in Thane from the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. The Corporation evicted it for illegal subletting by an order of February 2020. The challenge mounted in the High Court was not that the subletting had not happened, but that the eviction order had gone beyond the case put in the show cause notice — a well-recognised ground, and one that often works. On 1 October 2026 it did not, because the two documents said the same thing.

The authority relied on, and why it did not fit

The petitioner's argument rested on a line of cases about authorities shifting their ground, and the one pressed came from the tax side.

In that case the revenue authorities had detained goods on a ground different from the one in the show cause notice, and the appellate authority had then imposed a penalty on yet another ground — that the e-way bill had expired, although it had accompanied the goods — whereas the notice had alleged that the vehicle was travelling to a destination not mentioned in the invoice. “Thus, there was a complete change by the Revenue in respect of the final order while detaining the goods and the allegations as made in the show cause notice.”

The comparison is what disposes of the petition. “However, in the facts of the present case, the same is not the position, inasmuch as the impugned eviction notice and the impugned eviction order were both based on the allegation of illegal subletting by the Petitioner.” One allegation at the start, the same allegation at the end. “It cannot therefore be accepted that the eviction order had traveled beyond the allegations made in the impugned eviction notice.”

The principle the petitioner invoked is a real one, and the judgment does not weaken it. What it illustrates is the discipline the principle requires: the complaint is about a change of case, so it has to be made by comparing the notice with the order, and here that comparison produced nothing.

The narrow window under Article 227

Before reaching the comparison, the Court set out how little room the jurisdiction invoked actually leaves.

Under Article 227 the High Court “sits in a supervisory jurisdiction and not as a Court of first appeal to re-appreciate or re-weigh evidence or facts”. It is a correctional jurisdiction, for setting right “grave derelictions of duty or flagrant abuse and violations of fundamental principles of law or justice”, to be used sparingly and only where a quasi-judicial authority, tribunal or subordinate court has reached an unreasonable or perverse finding. A petitioner who merely disagrees with the conclusion on subletting is in the wrong forum.

There was also a fallback in the Corporation's answer which the petition had to get past. Its counsel accepted that the eviction order had been passed on additional grounds beyond the notice, but pointed out that subletting formed part of the order as well — and submitted that an order can be sustained on the strength of another existing and relevant ground which would independently have led to the same conclusion. On the Court's finding that notice and order shared the same central allegation, that argument did not need to be decided.

Order

Finding that the impugned judgment and order suffered from no infirmity warranting interference, the Court declined to exercise its jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution. No fault could be found with the order of 6 February 2020 or with the eviction proceedings as carried out by the Corporation.

The petition was dismissed, Rule made absolute in those terms, and no costs awarded. An eviction ordered in February 2020 and challenged in 2023 is now final, six years after the Corporation acted.

For holders of industrial land the judgment is a reminder of where the real contest lies. An allotment of a plot in an industrial estate carries a condition against subletting, and a challenge to eviction for breach of it has to be fought on the facts before the authority that decides them. Once a quasi-judicial authority has found subletting on material, Article 227 offers a route only to someone who can show the finding was perverse — not to someone who can show it was arguable.

The change-of-grounds argument is worth keeping in view for what it is: a natural justice point, about whether a party knew the case it had to meet. It succeeds where an authority alleges one thing and decides on another, because the party was never given the chance to answer what actually defeated it. It does not succeed merely because the final order says more than the notice did, provided the ground that carried the order was in the notice and was answered. That is the line this judgment draws, and the petitioner fell on the wrong side of it.