An order of eviction or of rent fixation is rarely the end of the dispute. The appeal is where a landlord who has lost possession, or a tenant who is about to lose his home, gets a second adjudication on facts and law. Under the Goa Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968 the right of appeal is governed by Section 45, supported by the revisional power in Section 46 and the wide remedial powers in Section 47. A note of caution at the outset: although this chapter is keyed to the “Section 23” eviction order that an appeal most often challenges, the appellate machinery itself sits in Chapter VIII of the Act — Section 45 onwards — and any answer that locates the appeal in Section 23 will be marked wrong. This article maps the forums, the thirty-day limitation, the deposit condition that silently defeats most appeals, and the case law that controls how Tribunals and the High Court exercise their powers.
Where the appeal sits in the Act
The Goa Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968 is a self-contained code. Adjudication at first instance is shared between the Authorised Officer (for repair and reconstruction matters under Section 31), the Controller (the general eviction and rent authority), and the Rent Tribunal. Chapter VIII — “Authorities, Procedure and Appeals”, comprising Sections 41 to 50 — builds the appellate and revisional tier above them. Section 41 empowers the Administrator to constitute, by notification, an Appellate Board and a Rent Tribunal, with a proviso permitting the powers of the Appellate Board to be entrusted to the Administrative Tribunal constituted under the Goa, Daman and Diu Administrative Tribunal Act, 1965. The substantive grounds that generate these orders — arrears, sub-letting, bona fide need — are dealt with in the grounds of eviction chapter; what follows assumes such an order already exists and asks how it travels upward. The hub page for the whole statute is the Goa Buildings Rent Control Act notes.
Section 45: the two appellate channels
Section 45 creates two parallel channels and it is essential to keep them distinct. Sub-section (1) provides that “from every order, other than an interim order, passed by the Rent Tribunal, an appeal shall lie to the Appellate Board.” Sub-section (2) provides that “from every order, other than an interim order, passed by the Authorised Officer under Section 31, or by the Controller, an appeal shall lie to the Administrative Tribunal.” The destination therefore depends entirely on the identity of the original authority: a Controller’s eviction order is appealed to the Administrative Tribunal, while a Rent Tribunal’s order goes to the Appellate Board. The deliberate exclusion of “interim orders” from both limbs is the statute’s anti-fragmentation device — a party aggrieved by an interlocutory direction cannot splinter the proceeding into a chain of mini-appeals; relief against such orders lies, if at all, in revision under Section 46 or in the High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction. Orders fixing or revising rent travel up the same ladder, so the appellate route is the practical sequel to standard rent fixation disputes.
An appeal is a creature of statute
A first-principle examiners reward: there is no inherent right of appeal. As the Supreme Court emphasised in Garikapati Veeraya v. N. Subbiah Choudhry, AIR 1957 SC 540, the right of appeal is a substantive right conferred by statute and, once it accrues, is a vested right governed by the law as it stood when the lis commenced, not a mere matter of procedure. It follows that under the 1968 Act an appeal lies only where Section 45 confers it — against final orders of the Controller, Authorised Officer or Rent Tribunal — and not otherwise. The corollary, settled in Vidyacharan Shukla v. Khubchand Baghel, AIR 1964 SC 1099, is that the substantive right of appeal is distinct from the procedure that governs its exercise; the procedural framework (limitation, deposit, form) may be borrowed or prescribed, but it cannot enlarge or destroy the substantive right the legislature has granted. For the candidate, the safe formulation is: identify the statutory source first, then ask whether the order is final and whether the appellant has complied with the conditions attached to the right.
The thirty-day limitation and its proviso
Section 45(3) fixes the time: “An appeal under this section shall be preferred within thirty days from the date of the order appealed against.” The proviso then supplies the escape valve — the Appellate Board or, as the case may be, the Administrative Tribunal “may entertain the appeal after the expiry of the said period of thirty days, if it is satisfied that the applicant was prevented by sufficient cause from filing the appeal in time.” This mirrors the “sufficient cause” standard of Section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963, and the authoritative gloss is Collector, Land Acquisition, Anantnag v. Mst. Katiji, (1987) 2 SCC 107, which directs a justice-oriented, liberal approach so that disputes are decided on merits rather than defeated by technical default — while warning that the discretion is not a licence for the negligent. The thirty days run from the “date of the order”; where a party was unaware of the order, the constructive-knowledge principle and proof of the date of communication become decisive in the condonation inquiry. Katiji lists six guiding propositions — among them that ordinarily a litigant gains nothing by lodging an appeal late, that refusing condonation can defeat a meritorious cause for a venial lapse, and that substantial justice deserves preference over technical considerations — and these are routinely applied to rent-control appeals. The discretion is, however, judicial and not arbitrary: bald or evasive explanations, or unexplained gaps of weeks, will not satisfy “sufficient cause”, and the appellant must account for the whole period of delay, day by day, not merely offer a general excuse.
Deposit of rent: the silent condition precedent
The provision that defeats more appeals than limitation is Section 32. It declares that no tenant against whom an eviction proceeding has been instituted “shall be entitled to contest the proceedings before the Controller or any appellate or revisional authority or to prefer any appeal or revision under this Act, unless he has paid to the landlord or deposits” all arrears of rent up to date and continues to pay or deposit rent as it falls due until the proceedings terminate. The condition is thus expressly carried into the appellate stage: a tenant-appellant who is in arrears, or who stops depositing during the pendency of the appeal, forfeits the very right to be heard. Section 32(3) lets the appellate authority determine the rent summarily where its quantum is disputed, and Section 32(4) deals with the consequences of default. The lesson for both sides is procedural discipline — a meritorious appeal on bona fide need or sub-letting collapses if the deposit lapses. The same discipline governs disputes over lawful increases in rent that surface on appeal.
Powers of the appellate authority: Section 47
Section 47 confers wide remedial powers: any appellate or revisional authority “may confirm, modify or rescind the order in appeal or revision or its execution or may remand the case for disposal with such directions as deemed fit or pass such other order as is legal and is in accordance with the provisions of this Act.” The remand power was inserted by amendment in 1979, curing an earlier gap. Two provisos discipline the exercise: first, no order may be varied to a party’s prejudice unless that party has been given an opportunity to appear and be heard — a statutory codification of audi alteram partem at the appellate stage; second, every order of the Authorised Officer, Controller or Rent Tribunal “shall be final, unless varied in appeal or revision, and every order passed in appeal or revision shall be final.” The appellate authority therefore conducts a full rehearing on facts and law, but must respect the deposit condition under Section 32 and the natural-justice safeguard before reversing a finding against the respondent.
Revision under Section 46 distinguished
Where no appeal lies, or where an appellate order is itself challenged, Section 46 supplies a revision. The Administrative Tribunal “may, in exceptional circumstances, on the application of any party, call for and examine the records relating to any order passed under this Act by the Authorised Officer, the Controller, the Rent Tribunal, or the Appellate Board” to satisfy itself as to the “correctness, legality or propriety” of the order, and may pass such order as it thinks fit. Two limits matter: the words “exceptional circumstances” signal that revision is not a second appeal on the merits but a supervisory check confined to jurisdictional error, illegality or material irregularity; and the proviso bars calling for the record “after the expiry of ninety days from the date of the order.” Section 46(2) leaves costs to the Tribunal’s discretion. The appeal-revision distinction — rehearing versus supervision — is a recurring examination theme and should be stated with the “correctness, legality or propriety” formula.
Dismissal on limitation is still an order in appeal
A subtle but frequently tested point concerns the status of an appeal rejected as time-barred. The Supreme Court in Mela Ram & Sons v. Commissioner of Income Tax, AIR 1956 SC 367, held that an appeal presented out of time is nonetheless an appeal, and an order dismissing it as barred by limitation, or refusing to condone delay, is an order “passed in appeal”. Translated to the 1968 Act, an order of the Administrative Tribunal refusing to condone delay and rejecting the appeal under Section 45 is itself an appellate order — final under the second proviso to Section 47 — and is therefore amenable to revision under Section 46 or to the High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction, rather than being a non-appealable nullity. This prevents a party from being left wholly without remedy merely because the appeal failed at the threshold rather than on the merits. The reasoning rests on a liberal construction of the appellate provision: the word “appeal” is read to embrace the act of presentation regardless of timeliness, so that the order disposing of it — whether by condonation and rehearing, or by refusal and rejection — is uniformly an order made in the exercise of appellate jurisdiction. The practical significance under the 1968 Act is that the finality clause in the second proviso to Section 47 attaches even to a threshold dismissal, fixing the order with the attributes of an appellate decision and channelling any further challenge into revision or supervisory review rather than a fresh round before the same forum.
Beyond the Act: High Court supervision under Article 227
The Act’s hierarchy ends with the Administrative Tribunal or Appellate Board; there is no statutory appeal to the High Court. The aggrieved party’s recourse is the High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution. In Surya Dev Rai v. Ram Chander Rai, (2003) 6 SCC 675, the Court explained that Article 227 superintendence is to be exercised sparingly, only to keep subordinate courts and tribunals within the bounds of their authority — for patent jurisdictional error, perversity or breach of natural justice, not to re-appreciate evidence as a further appeal. That decision was partly overruled in Radhey Shyam v. Chhabi Nath, (2015) 5 SCC 423, where a three-Judge Bench held that judicial orders of civil courts are not amenable to a writ of certiorari under Article 226 and that the correct route to challenge such orders is the supervisory power under Article 227. For rent-control matters in Goa, the practical takeaway is that a Tribunal’s order under Section 45 or Section 46 is tested in the High Court only on supervisory grounds, with great deference to concurrent findings of fact.
Procedure, evidence and execution of appellate orders
The mechanics are spread across Sections 43, 44 and 50. Section 43 vests the Controller, Rent Tribunal and Appellate Board with the same powers as a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 — summoning witnesses, compelling production of documents and issuing commissions — and deems their proceedings judicial proceedings for the purposes of the Indian Penal Code. Section 44 requires that the procedure in inquiries, appeals and proceedings be such as may be prescribed by rules, and that every decision be recorded as a reasoned order — a built-in obligation to give reasons that the appellate authority must itself honour. Finally, Section 50 makes an order of any original, appellate or revisional authority directing recovery of possession or eviction executable by that authority as a decree of a civil court, with all the powers of a civil court. The appellate order is therefore not a paper victory: once final under Section 47, it is directly enforceable. Candidates should also recall the threshold question of who qualifies as landlord or tenant, anchored in the definitions chapter, since standing to appeal turns on it.
Frequently asked questions
Which section governs appeals under the Goa Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968?
Appeals are governed by Section 45, not Section 23. Section 23 deals with a landlord's right to obtain possession; Section 45 in Chapter VIII creates the appeal, with revision under Section 46 and appellate powers under Section 47.
To whom does an appeal lie from a Controller's eviction order?
Under Section 45(2), an appeal from an order of the Controller (or of the Authorised Officer under Section 31) lies to the Administrative Tribunal. By contrast, under Section 45(1) an appeal from a Rent Tribunal's order lies to the Appellate Board.
What is the limitation period for filing an appeal, and can delay be condoned?
Section 45(3) prescribes thirty days from the date of the order. The proviso lets the appellate authority condone delay on proof of “sufficient cause”, applied liberally per Collector, Land Acquisition, Anantnag v. Mst. Katiji (1987) 2 SCC 107.
Must a tenant deposit rent to maintain an appeal?
Yes. Section 32 bars a tenant from contesting before any appellate or revisional authority, or preferring any appeal or revision, unless all arrears are paid or deposited and rent continues to be deposited during the proceedings. Default forfeits the right to be heard.
How does revision under Section 46 differ from an appeal?
An appeal under Section 45 is a rehearing on facts and law. Revision under Section 46 is a supervisory check by the Administrative Tribunal “in exceptional circumstances”, confined to the correctness, legality or propriety of the order, and barred after ninety days from the date of the order.
Can a Tribunal's appellate order be challenged in the High Court?
There is no statutory appeal to the High Court. The remedy is supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227, exercised sparingly per Surya Dev Rai v. Ram Chander Rai (2003) 6 SCC 675, as clarified in Radhey Shyam v. Chhabi Nath (2015) 5 SCC 423, for jurisdictional error or perversity only.