New Delhi, Oct 21: Expressing serious concern over the abuse of judicial process by unscrupulous tenants to deny fruits of justice to a landlord, the Supreme Court has directed the tenants to vacate a shop and pay Rs 25,000 as "exemplary" cost to its owner. A bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice B P Singh, taking objection to the manner in which the Punjab and Haryana High Court allowed the tenants to reopen the case, said "these types of errors on the part of judicial forums only encourage frivolous and cantankerous litigations causing delay and bringing bad name to the judicial system." One Ravinder Kaur initiated eviction proceedings against her tenants occupying one of her shops at Chowk Panjeer at Jalandhar in 1997 before the rent controller.
The rent controller, after taking into consideration the fact that the tenants had no objection about the site plan of the shop, decided the application in year 2000 in favour of the landlord dismissing the objections raised by tenants.
The appellate authority, the High Court and the apex Court, all three dismissed the appeals filed by the tenants who had given an undertaking to vacate the premises by March 30, 2002.
When the premises was not vacated by the appointed date, the landlord moved the executing court for implementation of the orders of eviction. Before the executing court, the tenants raised objection that the eviction order was not with regard to the shop they were occupying.
Bureau Report