Eviction decree confirmed over a wall the tenant pulled down without written consent
Justice Maulik J. Shelat rejected a civil revision but suspended his own judgment for four weeks so the tenant could approach the Supreme Court.
A tenant evicted for removing a wall in the suit premises without his landlord's written consent has failed in revision before the Gujarat High Court, and the case turned on who had to prove when the wall came down. Justice Maulik J. Shelat held that under Article 66 of the Limitation Act, 1963 the landlord had twelve years from the breach to sue, that a suit filed in 2009 was therefore well within time, and that the tenant's own witnesses had not established his case that the wall was removed in 1994. The judgment confirms the eviction decree, but was suspended for four weeks on the tenant's request so that he could take the matter to the Supreme Court.
The revision and the decree under challenge
The revision application was filed under Section 29(2) of the Gujarat Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 against a judgment and decree of 18 March 2026 passed by Appellate Bench No. 2 of the Small Causes Court at Ahmedabad in Regular Civil Appeal No. 121 of 2019. The applicant is the tenant; the respondents are a mandir trust and others. Mr. Mehul Shah, senior advocate, assisted by Mr. Jenil M. Shah appeared for the applicant, and Mr. Dhruvik K. Patel for the first three opponents. The judgment was reserved on 28 July 2026 and pronounced on 1 October 2026.
Twelve years from the breach, not from the tenancy
The limitation question was the tenant's main ground, and the judgment answers it by identifying the right article. The breach relied on was the removal of the wall by the tenant without the written consent of the landlord — a breach of a condition of the rent agreement. Under Article 66 of the Limitation Act, 1963 a landlord may file suit within twelve years of such a breach. The suit having been filed in 2009, it was well within that period.
That left the tenant needing to show that the breach had occurred long enough ago to put the suit outside even twelve years, which is why his case was that the wall was removed in 1994.
The witnesses who could not place themselves nearby
The tenant led an expert as well, and then two further witnesses, which tells its own story about where he thought the weakness lay: an expert can speak to how old a change in a structure looks, but only a neighbour can say when the wall was there and when it was gone.
Besides the expert, the tenant examined two other witnesses to prove his case. Neither inspired confidence in the courts below, and Justice Shelat agreed with that assessment for a specific reason: neither witness produced anything on record to show that he lived or did business near the suit premises. Having read their evidence, the judgment finds it does not inspire confidence and was correctly discarded.
The absence that mattered most was of the witnesses who were not called. The tenant could easily have examined the person doing business next door, but for reasons best known to him he examined no other tenant and no person with a nearby shop who could say that the wall had been removed in 1994.
There was a pleading difficulty as well. The issue of limitation was neither framed nor satisfactorily proved by the tenant before the courts below, and the Appellate Court had correctly observed that limitation, being a mixed question of law and fact, could not yield relief by a declaration that the suit was time-barred.
Order
The judgment holds that the eviction decree suffers from no jurisdictional error, and that the findings of fact recorded by the courts below suffer from no gross irregularity and are in no manner perverse or grossly erroneous. No interference being warranted in revisional jurisdiction, the revision application was found devoid of merit and rejected, and the judgment and decree of the courts below were confirmed. Notice was discharged, the interim relief granted earlier stood vacated forthwith, and there was no order as to costs.
After pronouncement, senior counsel for the tenant asked for the judgment to be suspended so that his client could approach the Supreme Court; counsel for the respondents, with reluctance, left it to the court's discretion. Noting that the revision had been filed by a tenant who is also facing execution proceedings, and on the peculiar facts, the court suspended its judgment for four weeks, subject to the tenant not creating any third-party interest in the suit property in any manner.