Landmark Cases on CG Rent Control

The Chhattisgarh Rent Control Act, 2011 is a deceptively short statute, but it has generated case law that reaches all the way to a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. The decisions that matter for the judiciary aspirant cluster around three themes: the constitutional validity of the Act's unusual appeal architecture, the breadth of the word accommodation, and the working of the Rent Control Tribunal and the eviction grounds. This note maps the leading authorities, ties each to the precise provision it construes, and explains why Rajendra Diwan v. Pradeep Kumar Ranibala is the single most examined judgment on this Act.

Why case law dominates this Act

Unlike older tenancy statutes, the 2011 Act deliberately discarded the civil-court route and channelled disputes into a specialised Rent Control Tribunal constituted under Article 323-B of the Constitution (Section 6). That structural novelty is exactly what made the Act litigation-prone: a brand-new adjudicatory body, a fresh definition of accommodation, and an appeal clause that tried to send second appeals straight to the Supreme Court. Each of these design choices was tested in court within a decade of enactment. For an examinee, the cases are not decoration around the bare provisions; they are the law in operation. A reader should approach this note alongside the introduction and the definitions note, because almost every leading decision turns on how a defined term or a jurisdictional clause is read. The hub page at Chhattisgarh Rent Control Act notes collects the full series.

Rajendra Diwan v. Pradeep Kumar Ranibala: the facts

The landmark authority on the Act is Rajendra Diwan v. Pradeep Kumar Ranibala, reported at 2019 SCC OnLine SC 1586 and decided on 10 December 2019. The dispute began ordinarily enough. The respondent-landlord moved the Rent Controlling Authority for eviction of the appellant-tenant under Section 12 of the Act; the Authority allowed the application and the Rent Control Tribunal affirmed it. The tenant then sought to invoke Section 13(2), which on its face provided that an appeal against an order of the Rent Control Tribunal shall lie with the Supreme Court. The appeal reached the Supreme Court, but instead of deciding the eviction on its merits the Court confronted a prior question that the appeal clause itself raised: could a State legislature validly create a direct statutory appeal to the Supreme Court at all? Because the question was of constitutional importance, the matter was placed before a five-judge Constitution Bench comprising Arun Mishra, Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran, M.R. Shah and S. Ravindra Bhat, JJ.

Section 13(2) struck down for want of legislative competence

The Constitution Bench held Section 13(2) of the Act to be ultra vires the Constitution, null and void and of no effect. The reasoning rests squarely on the distribution of legislative power in the Seventh Schedule. Entry 77 and Entry 78 of List I commit the constitution, organisation, jurisdiction and powers of the Supreme Court to Parliament alone. By contrast, Entry 65 of List II and Entry 46 of List III, which empower the State and Concurrent fields to deal with the constitution and organisation of courts, expressly carve out the Supreme Court. The upshot, the Court reasoned, is that a State legislature simply has no field within which to clothe the Supreme Court with a new appellate jurisdiction. A provision that mandates the Supreme Court to entertain an appeal is therefore beyond the competence of the Chhattisgarh legislature. This holding governs how every later litigant must approach the Act, and it is best read with the appeal scheme described in the eviction grounds note.

Presidential assent cannot cure incompetence

A subtle but heavily examined limb of Rajendra Diwan concerns the effect of Presidential assent. The Act had received the assent of the President, and it was argued that assent under the proviso to Article 254(2) validated the appeal clause. The Constitution Bench rejected the contention in unambiguous terms: Presidential assent operates only to resolve a repugnancy between a validly enacted State law and an existing Union law within a competent field. It cannot supply legislative competence that was never there. As the Court put it, assent cannot and does not validate an enactment that is in excess of the legislative powers of the State. The principle is a frequent multiple-choice trap, because candidates wrongly assume that assent cures every defect. It cures repugnancy, not incompetence. The distinction also explains why severability did not save the clause; the vice lay in the enacting power itself.

A statutory appeal is not Article 136

The Bench was careful to separate the invalid Section 13(2) from the Supreme Court's existing constitutional jurisdiction. Article 136 confers a discretionary power of special leave that the Supreme Court grants or refuses in its own discretion; it is not an appeal as of right that any litigant can demand. Section 13(2), by contrast, purported to create a mandatory second appeal that the Court would be bound to hear in every routine rent matter. That mandatory character is what made it constitutionally objectionable. The aggrieved party retains the discretionary remedy of special leave under Article 136 and the High Court's supervisory jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227, but loses the pretended automatic appeal. For students, the takeaway is that the striking down of Section 13(2) did not leave litigants remediless; it merely redirected them to the constitutionally proper fora.

Sourabh Fuels: open land as accommodation

The second cluster of cases construes the definition of accommodation in Section 2 of the Act. In Sourabh Fuels v. Suresh Kumar Goyal, 2022 SCC OnLine Chh 1634, decided on 16 September 2022, a Division Bench of P. Sam Koshy and Parth Prateem Sahu, JJ. held that open land which is not used for agricultural purposes, when let out under a written agreement, falls within the definition of accommodation. The Court relied on the plain text of the definition, which extends beyond a building to include open space, grounds, garden, garage and land not used for agriculture. The Bench rejected the argument that the Act protects only buildings together with appurtenant land, holding that a lease of non-agricultural vacant land squarely attracts the Act. The same definitional breadth is unpacked in the definitions note and bears directly on which premises the application and exemptions note treats as covered.

Superstructures within the definition

Continuing the definitional theme, the Chhattisgarh High Court in Sushil Dhanorkar v. Sushila Soni, decided by a Division Bench of Goutam Bhaduri and N.K. Chandravanshi, JJ., held that a superstructure raised on leased land is included within accommodation under Section 2 of the Act. The tenant had challenged a Tribunal eviction order on the footing that the demised premises were not accommodation at all. Reading Section 2 purposively and consistently with Sourabh Fuels, the Court held that a constructed superstructure is plainly within the protected class, so the Tribunal had jurisdiction. Taken together, the two decisions establish a generous, tenant-protective reading of accommodation: neither the absence of a conventional building nor the presence of only a superstructure takes the premises outside the Act. This interpretive posture echoes the Act's own internal rule that, where two readings are possible, the benefit goes to the tenant.

The Tribunal's jurisdiction after Article 323-B

Because the Act ousts the ordinary civil court and vests adjudication in the Rent Control Tribunal constituted under Article 323-B (Section 6), a recurring litigated question is the boundary of that jurisdiction. The High Court's writ and supervisory powers under Articles 226 and 227 survive the Tribunal scheme, a point the Supreme Court itself underscored in Rajendra Diwan when it located the proper post-Tribunal remedy. In practice, after the fall of Section 13(2), an aggrieved party challenges a Tribunal order before the High Court under Article 227 rather than by a statutory appeal. The cases on accommodation, including Sourabh Fuels, reached the High Court precisely through this supervisory route. Examinees should remember that the Tribunal is the original and appellate adjudicator within the Act, but it is not insulated from constitutional judicial review.

Eviction grounds and the special-landlord categories

The third cluster concerns eviction under Section 12 and the rights set out in the Act's schedules. The Act lists tenant rights in Schedule I and landlord rights, including grounds for recovery of possession, in Schedule II, with the Tribunal charged to enforce them. In Jasvinder Singh Khanuja v. Rent Control Officer, Manendragarh, the petitioner challenged a Tribunal order that had affirmed eviction in favour of a widow landlord who claimed the premises for her own use. The case illustrates the special-category landlord regime: where the landlord is a widow and certain other protected classes, the Act enables a shortened notice and a bona-fide-need claim. The Court examined whether the notice and the claimed need satisfied the statutory grounds before sustaining the eviction. The mechanics of these grounds, including the arrears ground and the bona-fide-requirement ground, are set out in the eviction grounds note.

Rent fixation and permitted increases in the case law

While the headline cases concern jurisdiction and definitions, the Act's rent-fixation and increase provisions also surface in litigation, particularly where a landlord seeks possession after declining a higher offered rent, or where a tenant disputes the rent demanded in an arrears notice. The Act ties the quantum of rent to the agreement between the parties and regulates increases, so a Tribunal hearing an arrears-based eviction must first be satisfied about the rent legally recoverable. These questions feed back into the eviction analysis because the arrears ground depends on a correctly computed standard rent. Readers should study these decisions together with the standard rent fixation and revision note and the permitted increases in rent note, since the case law assumes those provisions as its backdrop.

Exam takeaways and how to cite these cases

For the judiciary and CLAT-PG candidate, three propositions are worth memorising verbatim. First, Rajendra Diwan v. Pradeep Kumar Ranibala (2019 SCC OnLine SC 1586) struck down Section 13(2) because a State legislature cannot confer appellate jurisdiction on the Supreme Court, a field reserved to Parliament under Entries 77 and 78 of List I; and Presidential assent cannot cure that incompetence. Second, the accommodation definition is read broadly: Sourabh Fuels brings in non-agricultural open land and Sushil Dhanorkar brings in superstructures. Third, eviction runs through the Section 12 grounds and the Schedule II rights, with special-category landlords such as widows enjoying a relaxed notice regime, as Jasvinder Singh Khanuja illustrates. When citing in an answer, always pair the case with the exact provision it construes; examiners reward the candidate who links Rajendra Diwan to Section 13(2) and to Article 323-B, not merely the one who names the case.