The central premise of the Goa, Daman and Diu Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1968 is a reversal of the common-law position: a landlord cannot recover possession of premises merely because the contractual tenancy has ended. Section 21 erects an absolute bar, and Section 22 then opens narrow, exhaustively listed windows through which possession may be obtained. "Limitation on eviction" is therefore the doctrinal heart of the statute it describes the cluster of substantive and procedural restraints the closed list of grounds, the statutory cure periods, the deposit obligation under Section 32, the restrictions on repeat applications and the displacement of the ordinary notice to quit that together convert the landlord's possessory right into a tightly conditioned remedy.
The absolute bar in Section 21
Section 21 of the Act provides that, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other law or contract, a tenant shall not be evicted, whether in execution of a decree or otherwise, except in accordance with the provisions of the eviction chapter. This non-obstante framing is the first and widest limitation: it strips the landlord of every route to possession expiry of the lease term, determination by notice, or even a civil decree obtained otherwise and channels the entire dispute into the controller's jurisdiction under Section 22. The Supreme Court in Ganpat Ladha v. Sashikant Vishnu Shinde (AIR 1978 SC 955) captured the philosophy of such legislation, observing that rent control law interferes with the landlord's freedom of contract and property only to the limited extent of protecting tenants against the misuse of the power to evict in conditions of accommodation scarcity. Section 21 is thus the doorway through which all the remaining limitations are read: see the statutory scheme set out in the introduction and object of the Act.
Eviction only on the closed list of grounds
The most important limitation is substantive: the controller may direct a tenant to deliver possession only if satisfied of one of the grounds exhaustively enumerated in Section 22(2). These are non-payment of rent for a total period of three months coupled with failure to pay within the notice period, transfer or sub-letting or unauthorised change of user without the landlord's written consent, acts materially impairing the value or utility of the building, conduct amounting to nuisance to neighbouring occupants, the tenant acquiring or obtaining possession of an alternative residence within a five-kilometre radius, the tenant having ceased to occupy the building for a continuous period of four months without reasonable cause, and a denial of the landlord's title or a claim to permanent tenancy that is not bona fide. The list is closed: a landlord who cannot bring his case within one of these pigeon-holes has no remedy at all, however inconvenient the tenancy may be to him. Two consequences flow from this. First, the burden is squarely on the landlord to plead and prove the ground he relies on; the tenant need prove nothing until a ground is made out. Second, because the grounds are creatures of statute, they are construed strictly against the landlord and liberally in favour of the tenant, consistently with the protective object of the legislation. A ground vaguely pleaded, or one that shifts during the proceedings, will not sustain an order of possession. This catalogue is examined in detail under the grounds for eviction of a tenant.
The statutory cure period for arrears
Even where the landlord makes out the ground of non-payment, the Act builds in a second-chance limitation. The arrears ground requires default for a total period of three months and a failure to pay within thirty days of a notice demanding the rent; and the proviso to Section 22 directs that no order of eviction shall be made on that ground if the tenant, within thirty days of service of the summons in the proceedings, pays or tenders to the landlord, or deposits with the controller, the entire arrears together with the cost of the application. The default is thus curable twice over once before suit and again after summons and a tenant who purges the default cannot be evicted on that ground. The protection is, however, a once-in-a-lifetime indulgence: the benefit is not available to a tenant who, having availed it once for a building, again defaults for a total period of three months. The interaction of these timelines with the manner of computing rent is explored in standard rent fixation and revision.
Continuing deposit during pendency: Section 32
The cure provision works in tandem with Section 32, which obliges a tenant in eviction or rent proceedings to continue paying or depositing the rent as it falls due. Under Section 32(4) the controller may, where the tenant fails to deposit, order eviction; the obligation is a self-standing one, independent of any direction by the court. In Shri Baboo @ Surendra Gadekar v. Jivottam Krishna Naik, 2017(7) ALL MR 825, the Bombay High Court at Panaji upheld eviction under Section 32(4) where the tenant, despite repeated opportunities to deposit during the pendency of the proceedings, failed to comply, finding him a habitual rather than a casual or stray defaulter. The court drew the now-familiar line between a casual default, which attracts the protective discretion, and a habitual default, which forfeits it. The significance of Section 32 is that the duty to deposit does not depend on the landlord first applying or the court first directing; it is a continuing statutory obligation, and a tenant who allows arrears to accumulate during the very proceedings in which he claims protection undermines his own defence. Failure to deposit can operate as a restraint on the tenant's right to contest the eviction at all, so the provision functions both as a limitation that protects the paying tenant and as a sanction against the one who does not. The limitation here therefore cuts both ways: it shields the diligent tenant who keeps paying, but withdraws protection from the chronic defaulter who treats the deposit obligation with indifference.
Reasonable cause and the controller's discretion
A further limitation on the severity of eviction lies in the discretion vested in the controller. Where the controller is satisfied that a tenant's default in paying or tendering rent was not without reasonable cause, he may, notwithstanding the strict requirements of Section 32, give the tenant a reasonable time not exceeding thirty days to pay or tender the rent due, after hearing the parties. This converts what might otherwise be an automatic eviction into a conditional one. The four-month non-occupation ground is similarly softened by the words "without reasonable cause": a tenant who can show a genuine reason for the absence illness, posting elsewhere, or temporary necessity defeats the ground entirely. The recurring statutory phrase "reasonable cause" thus operates as a built-in safety valve, requiring the controller to assess the bona fides and circumstances of the tenant before possession is ordered.
Bona fide need as a conditioned, not automatic, ground
Where the landlord seeks possession for his own occupation under Section 23, the Act again hedges the right with conditions rather than granting it freely. The need must be genuine and bona fide, and the controller must weigh the competing claims before ordering eviction; a landlord who already has reasonably suitable accommodation, or whose asserted need is a pretext, fails. Special and accelerated rights are conferred on defined categories for instance, a landlord who is or was a member of the armed forces of the Union and has retired is entitled to recover possession for bona fide occupation by himself or his family but even these operate within the statutory framework rather than outside it. The detailed contours of this ground, including the comparative-hardship inquiry, are treated in eviction for bona fide need.
Restriction on repeat and premature applications
The Act limits not only the grounds but the timing and repetition of eviction attempts. Section 23 restrains a landlord from filing a fresh application for possession on the bona fide need ground for a prescribed period after an earlier application on the same ground has been decided, preventing successive harassment of the tenant. Section 24 reinforces this by barring an application under Section 23 before the expiry of an agreed fixed term of tenancy, so that the landlord cannot resile from a bargain he himself struck. Where an application to evict has been rejected by the controller, or in appeal or revision, the tenancy continues on the same terms and conditions and is not terminable by the landlord except on a fresh statutory ground. These provisions impose a temporal and procedural discipline that prevents the eviction machinery from being used as a tool of attrition. The policy is plain: a tenant who has successfully resisted one attempt at eviction should not be made to defend the same ground again and again, nor should a landlord be allowed to defeat his own fixed-term bargain by invoking the statute prematurely. The restriction on repeat applications thus complements the closed list of grounds the first limits how often the landlord may knock at the door, the second limits the doors at which he may knock.
Displacement of the ordinary notice to quit
A subtle but significant feature of the limitation scheme is that it both removes and replaces the common-law requirement of a notice to quit. The Supreme Court in V. Dhanapal Chettiar v. Yesodai Ammal (AIR 1979 SC 1745) held authoritatively that once a State rent control statute provides the grounds on which a tenant may be evicted, a notice under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act is not necessary; the statute, and not the contractual determination of the lease, is the source of the right to evict. For the Goa Act this means the landlord cannot manufacture a right to possession simply by terminating the contractual tenancy. What survives is not the contractual notice but the statutory notice demanding arrears under the non-payment ground a notice whose purpose is to give the tenant the chance to cure, not to end the tenancy. The protection is rooted in the statutory definitions of "landlord" and "tenant" discussed under definitions.
The tenant's status pending and after proceedings
The limitation on eviction has a temporal dimension that protects the tenant throughout the litigation. So long as proceedings are pending, the tenant remains in lawful possession and cannot be dispossessed except through a final order of the controller; the only price of continued possession is compliance with the Section 32 deposit obligation. The decision in Kashinath Narayan Nachinolkar v. M. Lily Dias (Bombay High Court, decided 29 September 2000) illustrates the operation of Section 32(4) in this setting, where eviction followed the tenants' failure to deposit the rent as directed during the pendency of an application brought on the grounds of arrears and change of user. Where, conversely, the eviction application fails, the statutory tenancy revives in full and the landlord must begin afresh on a new ground. The tenant's protected status therefore subsists until the very moment a valid eviction order takes effect. This continuity is what gives the rent control tenant his characteristic security: he holds not by grace of a subsisting contract, which may have ended, but by force of the statute, which treats him as entitled to remain until lawfully dispossessed. The practical lesson for tenants is equally clear protection during litigation is conditional, and the surest way to forfeit it is to stop depositing the current rent while resisting the landlord's claim.
How the eviction limits interlock with rent control
The restrictions on eviction cannot be read in isolation from the rent-fixing scheme, because the two halves of the Act are designed to reinforce each other. A landlord prevented from charging more than the standard rent might be tempted to evict instead; the eviction limitations close that escape route, just as the rent ceilings close the route of extortion. The non-payment ground itself is calibrated to standard rent arrears are measured against the lawful rent, so that an excessive demand cannot ground an eviction. The permissible enhancements discussed under lawful increases in rent mark the outer limit of what the landlord may recover without resort to eviction. Read together, the provisions express the legislative object identified in Ganpat Ladha: a limited, calibrated embargo on the landlord's rights that protects the tenant without expropriating the owner.
The architecture of limitation in summary
The Goa Act limits eviction along five interlocking axes. First, the source of the right is statutory, not contractual Section 21 bars eviction except under the Act and Dhanapal Chettiar confirms that the lease's determination is irrelevant. Second, the grounds are closed and exhaustively listed in Section 22(2). Third, several grounds are curable or qualified the thirty-day cure for arrears, the once-only bar, and the "reasonable cause" defence to non-occupation and default. Fourth, continued possession during litigation is conditioned on the Section 32 deposit, with the casual-versus-habitual default distinction in Gadekar governing the consequence of breach. Fifth, the timing and repetition of applications are restrained by Sections 23 and 24 and by the revival of the tenancy on rejection. For the wider statutory map, return to the Goa Buildings Rent Control Act hub.
Frequently asked questions
Can a landlord under the Goa Act evict a tenant simply because the lease has expired?
No. Section 21 bars eviction except on a ground listed in the Act, and the Supreme Court in V. Dhanapal Chettiar v. Yesodai Ammal held that expiry or determination of the contractual lease does not by itself entitle the landlord to possession; he must establish a statutory ground.
What are the grounds on which a tenant can be evicted?
Section 22(2) provides a closed list: arrears of rent for three months with failure to pay after notice, sub-letting or unauthorised change of user without consent, acts impairing the building, nuisance, acquiring another residence within five kilometres, ceasing to occupy for four continuous months without reasonable cause, and a denial of title or claim of permanent tenancy that is not bona fide.
How can a tenant in arrears avoid eviction?
The proviso to Section 22 lets the tenant defeat the arrears ground by paying or depositing the full arrears plus costs within thirty days of service of the summons. This benefit is available only once; a tenant who has used it before and defaults again for three months loses the protection.
What is the significance of Section 32 during eviction proceedings?
Section 32 obliges the tenant to keep paying or depositing rent as it falls due while proceedings are pending, and Section 32(4) permits eviction for failure to do so. In Shri Baboo @ Surendra Gadekar v. Jivottam Krishna Naik, the Bombay High Court upheld eviction of a habitual, as distinct from a casual, defaulter.
Does the non-occupation ground apply automatically after four months' absence?
No. The ground requires that the tenant has ceased to occupy for a continuous period of four months without reasonable cause. A tenant who shows a genuine reason for the absence, such as illness or a posting elsewhere, defeats the ground entirely, because reasonable cause is a built-in safety valve.
Can a landlord file repeated eviction applications until one succeeds?
No. Section 23 restricts fresh applications on the bona fide need ground for a period after an earlier application is decided, and Section 24 bars an application before a fixed term expires. Where an application is rejected, the tenancy continues on the same terms and the landlord must rely on a fresh statutory ground.