Court sitting in revisional jurisdiction does not act as a court of appeal : High Court of Delhi
The High Court has only to see whether the learned ARC has committed any jurisdictional error and has passed order on the basis of material available before it. Court sitting in revisional jurisdiction cannot act as a Court of Appeal. This was held in ASHOK MITTAL v. SUDESH MEHTA [RC.REV. 320/2015] in the High Court of Delhi by single bench consisting of JUSTICE jasmeet SINGH.
Facts of the case are that the respondent had filed an eviction petition that the tenanted premises were required by the respondent for use and occupation for running a commercial establishment.The present petition has been filed under Section 25-B (8) of the DRC Act, 1958 challenging of Eviction order passed by learned ARC.
The Court referred to the order passed by the learned ARC who had after analyzing all the grounds had held that respondent had a better title than the Petitioner with respect to the premises and had relied on the judgment passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court titled Rajender Kumar Sharma & Ors. Vs. Leela Wati & Ors under which it was observed that an eviction petition against one of the joint tenant is sufficient against all the joint tenants and all joint tenants are bound by the order of the Rent Controller as the joint tenancy is one tenancy and is not a tenancy split into different LRs.
The counsel for petitioner had cited the judgment titled Visalakshamma v. Balaji Agencies, to highlight that the jurisdictional error committed by the learned ARC can be interfered with in revision petition.
The Court relied on the judgement of Apex Court in Sarla Ahuja v. United India Insurance Company Ltd, where in it was held that,“The above proviso indicates that power of the High Court is supervisory in nature and it is intended to ensure that the Rent Controller conforms to law when he passes the order. The satisfaction of the High Court when perusing the records of the case must be confined to the limited sphere that the order of the Rent Controller is “according to the law”. In other words, the High Court shall scrutinize the records to ascertain whether any illegality has been committed by the Rent Controller in passing the order under Section 25-B. It is not permissible for the High Court in that exercise to come to a different fact finding unless the finding arrived at by the Rent Controller on the facts is so unreasonable that no Rent Controller should have reached such a finding on the materials available.”
Considering the precedent and the facts of the case High Court held that, the learned ARC had considered each of the defenses raised by the Petitioner in detail and had committed no jurisdictional error, thus there is no power with the court for interference. The order of eviction was on the basis of material available before the ARC, who came to the conclusion that no triable issue had been raised by the petitioner and consequently the eviction order was passed.