Introduction — Object, Application

The Goa, Daman and Diu Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968 (Act 2 of 1969) is the welfare statute that governs every contest between landlord and tenant over a controlled building in Goa. Enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Union Territory in the nineteenth year of the Republic and brought into force from 1 October 1969, its long title announces a triple object — to control rents, to control evictions, and to control the rates of hotels and lodging houses, alongside the requisition of vacant buildings. To read it well an aspirant must grasp three things at the outset: what the Act is for (object), where and to whom it applies (application and extent), and what it deliberately leaves outside its net (the exemptions in section 3). This note maps all three and the interpretive posture the courts adopt towards a statute of this kind.

Object: a beneficial code to control rent and eviction

The long title of the Act is the surest guide to its object — it is "An Act to provide for the control of rents and evictions and of rates of hotels and lodging houses, and for the requisition of vacant buildings" in the erstwhile Union Territory. Three distinct mischiefs are addressed. First, profiteering through inflated rents, met by the machinery of fair rent in Chapter III. Second, the eviction of tenants at the will of the landlord, met by the bar in section 21 and the closed list of grounds in section 22. Third, artificial scarcity through hoarding of vacant premises, met by the notice-of-vacancy and requisition scheme in Chapter II. A rent control law of this design is consistently read as beneficial or social legislation enacted to protect the weaker party, the tenant, against an acute post-war housing shortage. Yet the protection is not absolute. In Prabhakaran Nair v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 1988 SC 859, the Supreme Court cautioned that rent laws must hold a balance — the tenant deserves security but the landlord too is entitled to a reasonable return and a genuine right of recovery, so that housing stock is not driven off the market. The Goa Act follows that template: it shields the tenant but preserves the landlord's bona fide need in section 23.

Short title and enactment history

By section 1(1) the statute "may be called the Goa, Daman and Diu Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968". Though styled 1968, it is Act 2 of 1969, having received the President's assent on 22 February 1969 and been published in the Official Gazette, Series I No. 51, dated 20 March 1969. It came into force from 1 October 1969. After the bifurcation of the Union Territory and the attainment of statehood by Goa in 1987, the running title in Goa is read as the Goa Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968. The Act has been amended repeatedly — notably by Act 8 of 1987 (recasting the definition of "member of the family"), Act 8 of 1994 (raising the new-construction exemption to fifteen years and inserting the high-rent exemption), Act 24 of 1997 and Act 11 of 2009 — so the aspirant must always read the current text rather than the 1969 original. The candidate should fix the framework of key definitions in section 2 before turning to the operative chapters.

Extent and territorial application

Section 1(2) confines the Act geographically. It "extends, in the first instance, to the cities of Panaji, Margao, Mapusa and Vasco (including the Harbour area) and to Daman (Nani and Moti)", but empowers the Administrator, "from time to time, by notification in the Official Gazette," to extend the Act or any provision of it to any other area in the Union Territory. The statute therefore does not apply throughout Goa of its own force; it operates only in the four named cities plus the notified Daman areas and in any further area to which it has since been extended by gazette notification (extensions were notified with effect from 23 December 1980 and 1 June 1988). The practical consequence is jurisdictional: a tenant in a village to which the Act has never been extended cannot invoke its protections, and a landlord there sues in the ordinary civil court under the Transfer of Property Act. This selective extent is a recurring examination point — the Act is not a State-wide rent law but a city-centred one, switched on area by area by executive notification.

Commencement and staggered enforcement

Section 1(3) provides that the Act "shall come into force on such date as the Administrator may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint", with a proviso permitting different dates for different provisions and for different areas. The reference to commencement in any provision is then read as a reference to the coming into force of that provision. This staggered-commencement device — common to rent statutes — lets the executive roll out the controls progressively. The principal enforcement was notified with effect from 30 September 1969 (operative 1 October 1969). The drafting reflects the constitutional position of the territory at enactment: the "Administrator" is the administrator of the Union Territory appointed by the President under Article 239 of the Constitution, defined in section 2(b), and it is that authority — not a State legislature acting alone — whose notifications switch on and extend the Act.

Application to 'buildings': the subject-matter

The Act regulates dealings in a "building". By section 2(e), a "building" means any building, or part of a building, which is, or is intended to be, let separately for use as a residence or for commercial use or for any other purpose, and it expressly includes the appurtenant garden, ground and out-houses and any furniture supplied by the landlord, but it pointedly "does not include a room in a hotel or lodging house". The width of the definition is significant: it covers residential and commercial premises alike, and a part of a building let separately is itself a "building". Hotel and lodging-house rooms are carved out of the rent-and-eviction code and instead governed by the separate fair-rate and possession machinery in Chapter IV (sections 36 to 40). The reach of the controlled relationship therefore turns on the trio of definitions — building, landlord and tenant — examined next.

Who is bound: landlord and tenant

Section 2(j) defines "landlord" expansively as a person who for the time being is receiving, or is entitled to receive, the rent of any building, whether on his own account or on account of, or on behalf of, or for the benefit of, another person, or as a trustee, guardian or receiver, or who would so receive the rent if the premises were let. The phrase "entitled to receive" means title to the building is not the test; a co-owner or an agent collecting rent qualifies. Section 2(p) defines "tenant" to mean any person by whom or on whose account the rent of any building is, or but for special contract would be, payable, and crucially extends it to a sub-tenant, to specified heirs (the surviving spouse, son, unmarried daughter, father or mother living with him up to death) and to "any person continuing in possession after the termination of his tenancy". This last limb creates the statutory tenant. In Gian Devi Anand v. Jeevan Kumar, AIR 1985 SC 796, the Supreme Court held that where a rent law so defines "tenant", a person remaining in possession after determination of the contractual tenancy retains an estate or interest that is heritable. The closing words exclude any person against whom an eviction order or decree has already been made.

Application limited: buildings outside the Act (s.3)

Section 3 is the negative counterpart to extent — it lists buildings to which "nothing in this Act shall apply". Excluded are buildings belonging to the Government, a State Housing Board, a local authority or an Industrial Development Corporation (s.3(1)(a)); buildings vested in the Custodian of Evacuee Property (s.3(1)(b)); and, after the 1994 amendment, any newly constructed building for fifteen years from the date of its completion (s.3(1)(c)). A high-rent exemption inserted by Act 8 of 1994 and recast by Act 24 of 1997 removes from the Act any building let for the first time on or after 20 April 1994 whose monthly rent exceeds Rs 2,500 (residential) or Rs 5,000 (commercial). The object of the new-construction and high-rent carve-outs is the very incentive logic the Supreme Court endorsed in Prabhakaran Nair — to keep fresh and premium housing stock out of the freeze so that construction is not deterred. Section 3(2) adds a residual power: the Administrator may, in the public interest, exempt any building or class of buildings from all or any provisions by gazette notification. A tenant of an exempt building enjoys none of the Act's protections and may be evicted under the general law.

Application as an overriding shield: the bar on eviction

The clearest expression of the Act's protective object is section 21, the bar on eviction. It opens "Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any other law or contract," and declares that a tenant shall not be evicted, whether in execution of a decree or otherwise, except in accordance with Chapter V. The non obstante clause makes the protection override both the general law and any contractual term, so a tenant cannot waive it away by agreement. The corresponding section 22 then supplies a closed list of grounds — arrears of rent for three months and failure to clear them after notice (s.22(2)(a)), unauthorised transfer, sub-letting or change of user (b), acts materially impairing the building (c), nuisance (d), acquisition of alternate residence within five kilometres (e), cessation of occupation for four months (f), and mala fide denial of the landlord's title (g) — and these are explored in grounds of eviction. Because the grounds are exhaustive, an eviction sought on a ground outside the list cannot succeed; this exhaustiveness is the core of the statute's application to the landlord-tenant relationship.

Application through exclusive machinery: jurisdiction barred

The Act does not merely lay down rights; it channels their enforcement through a dedicated forum and ousts the ordinary courts. Disputes over fair rent, deposit of rent and eviction are decided by the Controller (and Additional Controller), the Rent Tribunal and the Appellate Board constituted under section 41. Section 56 then bars the civil court: "Save as provided in this Act, no court shall have jurisdiction to settle, determine or deal with any question which is by or under this Act required to be settled, determined or dealt with by the Controller, the Rent Tribunal, the Appellate Board, the Administrative Tribunal, or the Administrator," and no order of those authorities shall be called in question in any court. The proviso to section 21 is the narrow exception: where a tenant denies the landlord's title or claims permanent tenancy and the Controller finds the denial bona fide, the landlord may sue in a civil court. The scope of review of the authorities' findings is itself confined — in Hindustan Petroleum Corpn. Ltd. v. Dilbahar Singh, (2014) 9 SCC 78, a Constitution-bench-strength ruling on rent statutes held that a High Court exercising revisional jurisdiction over such findings cannot reappreciate evidence and substitute its own view, interfering only where the finding is perverse or based on no evidence.

Interpretive approach: beneficial but balanced construction

Because the Act is welfare legislation, ambiguities in its tenant-protecting provisions are read liberally in the tenant's favour, while provisions enabling eviction are read strictly against the landlord — the eviction grounds in section 22 being exhaustive and not to be enlarged by analogy. But the protective object is not pressed to absurdity. The carve-outs in section 3, the landlord's bona fide need in section 23, and the cautionary balance struck in Prabhakaran Nair all confirm that the legislative scheme protects the landlord's genuine requirement and reasonable return alongside the tenant's security. The practical takeaway for the aspirant is structural: first ask whether the Act applies at all (Is the premises a "building"? In a notified area under s.1(2)? Not exempt under s.3?); only then turn to the substantive controls on fair rent and eviction. For a complete map of the subject see the Goa Buildings Rent Control Act hub.