Non-payment of rent is the most litigated ground of eviction under any rent-control statute, and the Goa Act is no exception. Section 22(2)(a) of the Goa Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968 lets a landlord recover possession where the tenant is in arrears for a total period of three months and ignores a registered notice of demand. But the same section gives the tenant a powerful escape: deposit the whole arrears within thirty days of the summons and the eviction petition collapses. This note maps the precise statutory pre-conditions, the deposit defence, the crucial once-only limit on that defence, and the case law that governs how Controllers and the High Court read these requirements.
Where arrears fits in the eviction scheme
Section 22 is the gateway to eviction under the Act. Sub-section (1) requires a landlord who seeks to evict his tenant to apply to the Controller for a direction; he cannot act unilaterally or fall back on the Transfer of Property Act. Sub-section (2) then enumerates the permissible grounds, and clause (a) supplies the arrears ground. Every other ground - the general grounds of eviction and the special ground of bona fide need - lives in the same provision, so the procedural architecture (application to the Controller, reasonable opportunity to show cause, appeal and revision) is shared. What sets arrears apart is that the legislature attached its own self-contained defence, deposit of arrears, found in the proviso to and sub-sections following clause (a). For the wider object and reach of the statute see the subject hub and the introductory note on object and application.
The three-month arrears requirement
The first jurisdictional fact under Section 22(2)(a) is that the tenant must be "in arrears in payment of rent due by him in respect of the building for a total period of three months". Two features deserve emphasis. First, the statute speaks of a total period of three months, not three consecutive months - scattered defaults that aggregate to three months' rent satisfy the threshold, a reading consistent with how rent-control courts treat cumulative default. Second, the arrears must be of rent that is "legally recoverable". This qualifier matters where the contractual rent is in dispute: if a tenant has applied to fix or revise the standard rent, only the rent lawfully payable - not an inflated demand - can found the arrears. Sums that are not rent in the strict sense, such as charges the landlord cannot lawfully levy, fall outside the computation; only lawful increases in rent may be added to the base figure.
The mandatory registered notice of demand
Arrears alone do not entitle the landlord to a direction. Section 22(2)(a) additionally requires that the tenant "has failed to pay or tender such arrears of rent as are legally recoverable from him within thirty days of the receipt of or of the refusal of a registered notice served on him by the landlord for such arrears". The notice is therefore a condition precedent: it must be by registered post, it must demand the arrears, and the landlord's cause of action crystallises only once the tenant lets thirty days lapse after receiving - or refusing - that notice. Service is complete on receipt or on refusal, so a tenant who declines registered post cannot defeat the section by evasion; refusal is treated as service, mirroring the presumption under Section 27 of the General Clauses Act. A demand that misstates the amount, omits the registered-post requirement, or is sent before three months' arrears have accrued is defective and cannot support eviction. The thirty-day window runs from receipt or refusal, not from the date the notice is posted, so the landlord must be able to prove the date of delivery or refusal - typically through the postal acknowledgement or the returned cover bearing the refusal endorsement. An over-statement of the demand can be fatal: if the landlord demands more than the legally recoverable rent and the tenant tenders only the genuine arrears, the tenant has not "failed to pay" within the meaning of the section, and the inflated notice cannot found eviction. Drafting the notice with the correct, legally recoverable figure is thus the single most important step for a landlord on this ground, and is the point at which most arrears petitions are won or lost.
The deposit defence: paying your way out within thirty days
Even where the landlord has cleared both hurdles, the tenant retains a statutory shield. The provision following clause (a) directs that "no order for the eviction of a tenant shall be made on the ground specified in clause (a) of sub-section (2), if the tenant, within thirty days of the service of the summons of proceedings on him, pays or tenders to the landlord or deposits with the Controller the arrears of rent due by him up to the date of such payment, tender or deposit together with the cost of application". This is a near-automatic bar: if the tenant deposits the entire arrears, computed up to the date of deposit, plus the costs of the application, within thirty days of being summoned, the Controller has no discretion to evict on this ground. The defence is, however, all-or-nothing. A short or partial deposit does not earn protection; the tenant must tender the whole sum then due. Courts construing analogous deposit clauses, such as Section 12(3)(b) of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947, have insisted on substantial compliance and have refused to treat irregular or piecemeal payments as discharge of the statutory condition (see Mranalini B. Shah v. Bapalal Mohanlal Shah, AIR 1980 SC 954, and Mohan Laxman Hede v. Noormohamed Adam Shaikh, decided by the Supreme Court in 1988). In Mranalini B. Shah the tenant had deposited rent on sixteen occasions at irregular intervals of two to four months; the Supreme Court held this was not regular payment and that the court had no discretion to treat manifestly irregular payments as substantial compliance. The same exacting standard guides Controllers reading the Goa deposit clause: the protection is a reward for diligence, and a tenant who treats the deposit machinery casually cannot expect the section to rescue him. Importantly, the deposit must be made within thirty days of the service of the summons - the clock starts on service of the eviction proceeding, not on the earlier registered notice - so a tenant who slept through the notice period still has a final, statutorily guaranteed opportunity to cure the default once the petition is served, provided he acts within that thirty-day window and deposits in full.
What must be deposited - and the trap of costs
The deposit must cover "the arrears of rent due by him up to the date of such payment, tender or deposit". This is a moving figure: rent that falls due between the registered notice and the date of deposit must be added, so a tenant who deposits only the sum mentioned in the notice and ignores the rent accruing during the proceedings will fall short and lose protection. The clause separately requires "the cost of application" to be deposited along with the arrears. Tenants frequently overlook this head and deposit only the principal arrears; a deposit that excludes the costs is incomplete and does not satisfy the section. Where the amount of legally recoverable rent is genuinely uncertain - for instance because a standard-rent or lawful-increase dispute is pending - the prudent course is to deposit on the higher footing and reserve the right to adjustment, rather than risk under-deposit. The cleaner statutory route to keep current rent flowing during a dispute is to deposit it with the Controller under the Act's deposit machinery (Sections 24 and 25), which lets a tenant deposit rent where the landlord refuses to accept it and treats such deposit as a valid discharge.
The once-only benefit: the most dangerous proviso
The deposit defence is not an indefinite licence to default. The proviso to the deposit provision states that "no tenant shall be entitled to the benefit under this sub-section, if, having obtained such benefit once in respect of any building he again makes a default in the payment of rent of that building for a total period of three months". The consequence is severe: a tenant who has once saved himself by depositing arrears, and who thereafter again allows arrears to mount to three months, forfeits the shield altogether. On a second qualifying default the Controller may pass an eviction order even though the tenant offers to deposit the arrears. The proviso embodies the policy that the deposit defence is a one-time indulgence to a tenant in genuine difficulty, not a recurring device to chronically withhold rent. Two practical questions recur. First, is the bar building-specific? The text ties the forfeiture to default "in the payment of rent of that building", so the disqualification attaches to the particular building in respect of which the benefit was once taken; a fresh tenancy of a different building is unaffected. Second, does the second default itself have to reach the three-month threshold? Yes - the proviso speaks of default "for a total period of three months", mirroring the primary ground, so a trivial or short-lived lapse after the first deposit does not by itself extinguish the shield; it is a renewed three-month default that does. Practitioners should nonetheless treat the first deposit as exhausting the tenant's margin: after it, regular and timely payment becomes effectively mandatory, and the protective character of the section evaporates the moment arrears again accumulate to three months.
Discretionary relief where default was not without reasonable cause
Beyond the deposit defence, the section equips the Controller with a discretionary safety valve. Where the Controller is satisfied, on an application, that the tenant's default to pay, tender or deposit rent "was not without reasonable cause", he may, after hearing the parties, grant the tenant a reasonable time to pay or tender the rent due to the landlord. This injects a fault element resembling the "wilful default" doctrine developed under other rent statutes: bona fide confusion over the person entitled to rent, a genuine dispute about the recoverable amount, or unavoidable circumstances may amount to reasonable cause, whereas conscious and deliberate withholding will not. The Supreme Court's recurring approach - most recently reaffirmed in its 2025 wilful-default rulings under the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act - is that the mere pendency of a fair-rent or other dispute, without a stay and without contemporaneous payment, does not convert a default into one with reasonable cause. A tenant invoking this relief must therefore show a real, non-contumacious reason for the lapse, not a tactical one.
Procedure: opportunity to show cause and burden
Section 22(1) channels every eviction through the Controller, and the section requires that the tenant be given "a reasonable opportunity of showing cause against the application" before any order is made. The burden lies on the landlord to establish each ingredient of clause (a): the existence of three months' arrears of legally recoverable rent, valid service of the registered notice, and the tenant's failure to clear the arrears within thirty days of that notice. Only when these are proved does the question of the deposit defence arise. The Controller's order is subject to the Act's appeal and, ultimately, revisional oversight before the High Court of Bombay at Goa, which has repeatedly examined the arrears ground - as in litigation such as Kashinath Narayan Nachinolkar v. M. Lily Dias (Bombay High Court, Panaji Bench, 2000) arising under this very Act. Because the ingredients are jurisdictional, an order passed without proof of valid notice, or in disregard of a complete and timely deposit, is liable to be set aside.
Practical strategy for landlords and tenants
For a landlord, the winning sequence is disciplined: wait until arrears genuinely total three months, then serve a registered notice stating the exact legally recoverable arrears, and file before the Controller only after thirty days of unremedied default. Sloppy notice drafting is the commonest reason arrears petitions fail. For a tenant, the safest posture is never to allow arrears to reach three months at all; failing that, to deposit the entire arrears computed to date, plus the costs of the application, within thirty days of the summons - and to keep depositing current rent through the Controller under Sections 24 and 25 thereafter. Above all, the tenant must remember the once-only limit: the deposit defence can be used a single time, and a second three-month default in the same building extinguishes it. The arrears ground thus rewards precision on both sides and punishes the careless.
Key takeaways
Eviction for arrears under Section 22(2)(a) turns on three landlord-side ingredients - three months' total arrears of legally recoverable rent, a registered notice of demand, and thirty days' unremedied default - and one decisive tenant-side defence: deposit of the whole arrears plus costs within thirty days of the summons. That defence is rigid (it demands full, not partial, payment), one-time (forfeited on a second three-month default), and supplemented by a discretionary relief where the default was "not without reasonable cause". The persuasive weight of rent-control authority on deposit clauses, from Mranalini B. Shah onwards, confirms that substantial compliance is the touchstone. Read alongside the notes on standard rent and the grounds of eviction, this provision is the practical heart of the Goa Act.
Frequently asked questions
How much arrears triggers eviction under the Goa Rent Act?
Under Section 22(2)(a), the tenant must be in arrears of rent for a total period of three months. The default need not be three consecutive months; scattered defaults aggregating to three months' rent suffice, provided the rent is legally recoverable.
Is a registered notice mandatory before filing for eviction on arrears?
Yes. Section 22(2)(a) requires the landlord to serve a registered notice demanding the arrears, and the tenant must fail to pay within thirty days of receiving or refusing it. A petition filed without a valid registered notice is defective and cannot succeed on this ground.
Can a tenant avoid eviction by paying the arrears?
Yes. If the tenant deposits with the Controller (or pays/tenders to the landlord) the entire arrears due up to the date of deposit, together with the cost of the application, within thirty days of service of the summons, no eviction order can be made on the arrears ground. The deposit must be complete; a partial deposit does not protect the tenant.
Does the deposit defence include the landlord's costs?
Yes, and tenants often miss this. The statute requires the arrears "together with the cost of application" to be deposited. A deposit covering only the principal arrears, without the costs, is incomplete and forfeits the protection.
Can a tenant use the deposit defence more than once?
No. The proviso bars the benefit if a tenant who has obtained it once in respect of a building again defaults in rent for a total period of three months. After the first use, a second three-month default exposes the tenant to eviction even if he offers to deposit the arrears.
What if the tenant had a genuine reason for not paying?
The Controller may, on application, grant a reasonable time to pay if satisfied the default was "not without reasonable cause". Bona fide doubt about who is entitled to rent or a genuine recoverable-amount dispute may qualify; deliberate or tactical withholding will be treated as without reasonable cause, in line with the wilful-default approach of the Supreme Court.