Eviction of Tenant — Grounds (Section 12)

The Chhattisgarh Rent Control Act, 2011 abandons the old open-ended decree of possession and replaces it with a closed, statutorily-listed set of grounds. A landlord cannot simply terminate the tenancy and sue in the ordinary civil court; eviction is available only before the Rent Controlling Authority and only on a ground that the statute itself recognises. Those grounds are framed as the landlord's enforceable rights in Schedule 2 of the Act, read with Section 12, which fixes the rights and obligations of both sides and visits breaches with penalties. This article maps each ground — habitual default, substantial damage, change of user, nuisance, conviction, major renovation and the two notice-based grounds — and the case law that now governs how the Authority and the Rent Control Tribunal apply them.

The scheme: a closed list, not an open decree

The 2011 Act (also called the Chhattisgarh Accommodation Control Act, 2011) is a self-contained code. Disputes are decided by the Rent Controlling Authority, with an appeal to the Rent Control Tribunal; the ordinary civil court's jurisdiction over matters falling within the Tribunal's domain is excluded, subject only to Article 136 of the Supreme Court and Articles 226/227 of the High Court. The statute does not contain a single omnibus "Section 12 lists the grounds" clause in the manner of the Delhi or Maharashtra Acts. Instead, Section 12 declares that the rights of the landlord are those set out in Schedule 2 and the obligations those in Schedule 3, and Schedule 2 is where the recoverable grounds of eviction actually reside. A landlord asserting any of these grounds is, in the language of the Act, enforcing a Schedule 2 right before the Authority. For the wider architecture, see our introduction and subject hub.

What property is covered — and who is a tenant

Eviction grounds bite only where the premises are an "accommodation" and the occupier a "tenant" within Section 2. "Accommodation" means any building or part of a building, residential or non-residential, with its appurtenant land and fixtures. The reach of the term was tested in Sourabh Fuels v. Suresh Kumar Goyal, 2022 SCC OnLine Chh 1634, where a Division Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court held that the 2011 Act applies even to open land leased for non-agricultural purposes, mirroring the position under the old 1961 Act; the protective and eviction machinery therefore cannot be sidestepped by characterising the demised premises as bare land. "Tenant" under Section 2 includes a person continuing in possession after the tenancy has ended so long as no eviction order has been made, and, on the tenant's death, statutory heirs ordinarily residing or carrying on business with him. The threshold question of coverage is treated in detail under application, areas covered and exemptions and the term-by-term breakdown in definitions.

Ground (a): habitual default in rent

The first and commonest ground is that the tenant is a habitual defaulter in payment of rent and/or other dues. The Act does not leave "habitual" to impression: Section 2 defines a habitual defaulter as a tenant who, in a period of twelve months, fails on three or more occasions to pay in full the rent and all dues on the due date in accordance with the agreement. A single or even a second lapse, promptly made good, does not satisfy the ground — the conduct must cross the statutory three-strike threshold within the rolling year. This quantified test marks a sharp departure from the discretionary "wilful default" enquiry under older rent statutes, and it disciplines both landlord and Authority: the landlord must plead the specific defaulting months, and the Authority must find three or more. The relationship between the contracted rent, permitted increases and what counts as a "due" is governed by standard rent — fixation and revision and permitted increases in rent; a tenant who short-pays in the genuine belief that an increase is unlawful courts a default finding and should instead contest the increase before the Authority.

The default tenant's shield: deposit and the once-only relief

Default is not an automatic passport to eviction. The Act, in the manner of all rent-control statutes, lets a defaulting tenant purge the default by depositing or paying the arrears: a tenant sued for eviction (or appealing such an order) must deposit in court, or pay to the landlord, the amount calculated at the contracted rent for the period of default and thereafter continue to deposit month by month, typically by the fifteenth of each succeeding month. Compliance ordinarily bars an eviction order founded on default. But the relief is once only: a tenant who has taken the benefit once for a given accommodation and then again defaults for three consecutive months forfeits the protection and exposes himself to eviction. Aspirants must note the constitutional epilogue to this part of the Act. In Rajendra Diwan v. Pradeep Kumar Ranibala, 2019 SCC OnLine SC 1586, a five-judge Constitution Bench (Arun Mishra, Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran, M.R. Shah and S. Ravindra Bhat, JJ.) struck down Section 13(2) — which had purported to provide a statutory appeal directly to the Supreme Court against the Rent Control Tribunal — as ultra vires the State legislature's competence, since a State cannot legislate to confer or compel the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Tribunal itself, traceable to Article 323-B, survives; only the direct-appeal channel fell, leaving the discretionary route under Article 136.

Ground (b): substantial damage to the accommodation

Schedule 2 entitles the landlord to eviction where the tenant causes, or allows to be caused, substantial damage to the accommodation, "for any reason whatsoever". Two features deserve emphasis. First, the damage must be substantial — ordinary wear and tear, or trivial alteration that can be restored, will not do; the structure or its essential value must be materially impaired. Second, liability extends to damage the tenant merely allows, so a tenant cannot escape by pointing to a sub-occupant, guest or licensee through whom the harm was done. The phrase "for any reason whatsoever" forecloses the defence that the damage was unintentional or for the tenant's own convenience. This ground dovetails with the tenant's Schedule-4 obligation to keep the premises in good condition, and a landlord who delays acting while damage accumulates risks the Authority treating the loss as condoned. In practice the Authority asks three questions: is the impairment more than cosmetic; is it traceable to the tenant or to someone the tenant permitted on the premises; and has the landlord acted with reasonable promptness. A tenant who carries out unauthorised structural alteration — knocking through a load-bearing wall, sinking a borewell, raising a permanent shed — supplies the clearest case, because such work both damages the demised structure and frequently overlaps with the change-of-user and major-renovation grounds discussed below. Conversely, damage caused by an act of God, by the landlord's own neglect of his repairing duty, or by the inherent ageing of the building cannot be visited on the tenant.

Ground (c): using the premises for an unauthorised purpose

The landlord may evict where the tenant uses the accommodation for a purpose other than that for which it was let. The touchstone is the agreed purpose recorded in (or inferable from) the tenancy: a residential letting converted into a shop, godown or workshop, or a non-residential letting diverted to a wholly different trade, attracts this ground. The enquiry is one of substance — whether the dominant, settled use has changed — not whether an incidental or temporary activity has occurred. Because the Act ties the ground to the original purpose, the description of the letting in the agreement is critical evidence, and a landlord who has knowingly acquiesced in a changed user over a long period may find the Authority reluctant to grant relief. Change-of-user is frequently pleaded alongside nuisance or damage, but each must be independently established.

Grounds (d) & (e): social nuisance and criminal conviction

Two conduct-based grounds protect the building and its neighbourhood. The landlord may seek eviction where the tenant becomes a social nuisance — persistent conduct that disturbs the peaceful enjoyment of others in or around the premises — and, separately, where the tenant is convicted under any section of the Indian Penal Code (now the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita regime, the IPC's successor). The nuisance ground calls for proof of a continuing course of objectionable conduct rather than an isolated quarrel, and the Authority must be satisfied that the disturbance is real and attributable to the tenant. The conviction ground, by contrast, is largely documentary: a certified conviction establishes it, though fairness suggests the Authority will look to the nature of the offence and its connection, if any, to the tenancy before exercising its power. Both grounds reflect the Act's policy that statutory protection of tenure is forfeited by anti-social or criminal behaviour.

Ground (f): major renovation that cannot be done with the tenant in occupation

Schedule 2 allows recovery of possession for carrying out major renovation work which is not possible with the tenant housed in. The ground is closely allied to, but distinct from, eviction for the landlord's bona fide need to occupy: here the object is the building, not the landlord's residence or business. The landlord must show that the work is genuinely major — reconstruction or substantial structural repair rather than cosmetic improvement — and that it cannot reasonably be executed while the tenant remains. The Authority will scrutinise the bona fides of the plea, since a tenuous "renovation" can be a device to defeat tenure; supporting material such as a building plan, an engineer's assessment or a municipal requirement strengthens the case. As with comparable provisions elsewhere, an evicted tenant displaced for renovation may, depending on the order and the Act's restrictions, have an expectation of reinstatement and the landlord a corresponding restraint on re-letting to a stranger at a higher rent.

Ground (g): bona fide need on three months' notice

The most litigated notice-based ground permits eviction on three months' written notice where the accommodation is required for the landlord's own occupation or occupation by a family member — spouse, parent, son, daughter, daughter-in-law or son-in-law. For a specified landlord — a serving or retired government servant, a widow, armed-forces personnel, a person with physical or mental disability, or a senior citizen above sixty-five — the notice period is compressed to one month, reflecting the Act's solicitude for vulnerable owners. The requirement must be genuine. Though decided under the Delhi Act, the governing standard is supplied by Shiv Sarup Gupta v. Dr. Mahesh Chand Gupta, (1999) 6 SCC 222, where the Supreme Court held that a bona fide requirement is one born of a sincere, honest desire as distinguished from a mere whim, wish or pretext; the need must be real and present, and the landlord must lack suitable alternative accommodation. The Authority assesses the claim objectively while respecting that the landlord is ordinarily the best judge of his own needs. Because this ground generates its own body of doctrine, it is treated in full in eviction for bona fide need.

Ground (h): six months' no-reason notice with a re-letting bar

The Act introduces a market-oriented ground unfamiliar to older statutes: the landlord may recover possession on six months' written notice without assigning any reason, on condition that the accommodation will not be re-let at a higher rent for at least twelve months thereafter. This provision frees a landlord who simply wishes to take back his property without proving default, damage or need, while the re-letting embargo guards against the obvious abuse of using a no-reason notice to evict a sitting tenant only to install a new one at an inflated rent. The price of this freedom is the longer notice and the twelve-month restraint, and a landlord who breaches the embargo undermines the very order he obtained. The ground is a deliberate liberalisation, signalling the Act's attempt to balance security of tenure against an owner's autonomy over his asset. For the aspirant, two contrasts are worth fixing. First, this ground differs from bona fide need in kind: the landlord proves nothing about his requirement and the tenant cannot resist by arguing that the need is feigned, because no need is alleged — the only live questions are whether valid six-month notice was given and whether the landlord honours the re-letting restraint. Second, it differs from the no-fault grounds of older statutes by attaching a continuing post-eviction obligation, so that the order is not the end of the landlord's duties. A landlord tempted to re-let early at a higher rent should appreciate that the embargo is a statutory condition of the very right he invoked, and a breach can be urged against him in any later proceeding.

Procedure, forum and enforcement

Whatever the ground, the route is the same: an application to the Rent Controlling Authority, not a civil suit. No suit for eviction lies in the ordinary civil court except on a ground recognised by the Act, and once the Rent Control Tribunal is functional the jurisdiction of all courts over Tribunal matters is excluded save Article 136 and Articles 226/227. The Authority adjudicates the ground, and on a final order may enforce it through the modes available under the Act, including attachment and sale of the opposite party's movable or immovable property — a self-executing machinery that spares the landlord a separate execution proceeding. Section 12 reinforces the framework by attaching penalties (fine and, in stipulated cases, imprisonment) to breaches of the rights and obligations the Schedules create, so that the Act regulates conduct during the tenancy and not merely its termination. For the foundational vocabulary that the Authority applies throughout, see definitions.