Co-Owner Alone Can Maintain Eviction Suit: SC [Read Judgment]

Every co-owner owns every part and every bit of the joint property along with others, the court said.

The Supreme Court, in Om Prakash vs Mishri Lal (Deceased), has reiterated that a co-owner can alone maintain a suit for eviction of the tenant without joining the other co-owners if such other co-owners do not object.

The court made this observation in an appeal preferred against the high court order which had upheld a Rent Control Authority order negating the appellants’status of that of a landlord.

“The judicially propounded proposition is that when the property forming the subject matter of eviction proceedings is owned by several co-owners, every co-owner owns every part and every bit of the joint property along with others and thus it cannot be said that he is only a part owner or a fractional owner of the property,” a bench comprising Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Amitava Roy said.

Setting aside the high court order, the court observed that the appellants being the son of the original landlord, their status as landlords for the purpose of eviction under the Uttar Pradesh Urban Buildings (Regulation of Letting, Rent and Eviction) Act, 1972, could not have been questioned so as to non-suit them for want of locus.

The court further observed that the dismissal of the suit and the rejection of the application for the release under Section 21 of the Act by the high court on the sole ground that the appellants had no locus to maintain the same in absence of formal proof of the will was grossly misdirected and thus cannot be sustained, in view of the definition of the “landlord” provided in the Act.

Read the Judgment here.