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GS (Engineer)     07 November 2012

Is tenant eviction required?

Me and my wife are NRIs. My wife purchased a flat in Chennai 5 years ago before our marriage. The flat is in her and her father’s name and he resides in Chennai. The flat was purchased from another owner and not from the builder directly. During this purchase, the flat was occupied by a tenant at that time (he had been there for about 6 months) but, he continued to live there after my wife bought the flat. He has been paying a monthly rent (in cash) to my father-in-law, so ideally there are no receipts. There was no live & license agreement completed, a simple stamp paper document was signed by two parties viz. my father-in-law and the tenant. It has been 5 years now since the flat was purchased by us and the same tenant is still occupying our flat. So far, we do not have any urgent need of the flat but I am starting to worry if we may lose hold of it since, he has been there for quite a while. Is it a wise decision to change tenants at this time since it has been such a long time (more than 5 years now). Do I need to worry about this at all or am I just being paranoid? The tenant hails from Rajasthan and is in his mid-forties, married and has a kid. My father-in-law says there is nothing to worry since, he thinks the tenant is very nice person but I am not sure if this statement is convincing enough to let someone stay in our flat for such a long time. Can you please advise if we need to take any legal measures or should we ask the tenant to vacate. We can always say that we are planning to relocate to India for temporary period and will need the flat.
 
Thanks.

GS



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 4 Replies

Tripti Nagwekar (Owner)     09 November 2012

Dear GS,

Your father in law says you, not to worry about your wife's flat is right in general because it is not your flat at all and even if the flat is gutted by the rajasthani person, it should not harm you unlike your wife.  In your whole story, you nowhere mentioned that your wife is worried about her flat then why should you.  Your worry is for the flat because you are going to get it without effort.  Since you are greedy and your nature is identified by both your clever wife and clever father in law, they might have misinformed you that the flat is given on the rent.  On the contrary both of them might have sold that flat to that rajasthani person in cash and therefore they are not worrying about the flat and they are foolling you because as per law that flat is gone because of 5 years.  This is one part.

Now as per law the rajasthani person can be considered 'deemed tenant' in the absence of any proof of let out of flat between your wife and that rajasthani person for long time of five years.  Therefore your wife's flat can be looted by that 40's age rajasthani even if you fight the case in the court for 20 years.

I hope you must have understood and act accordingly.

GS (Engineer)     09 November 2012

Tripti,

Thanks for looking up my post and taking your time to reply. I was only asking for an opinion on the legal aspect not an opinion on my personal life. So I am going to ignore what you mentioned in the first paragraph. To just add to it, I have to be concerned about this since, we send money each month from our account for the monthly mortgage from here and it will continue for the next 20 years. And, the flat is still with us and is on rent, nobody has sold it to anyone.

However, I do agree with what you mention in the 2nd paragraph and wondering if you could shed some light on the "deemed tenant" definition. What does it mean and what action do we have to take. I may have to discuss and share this with my father-in-law and wife and let them know the repurcusions of failing to establish this leave and license agreement.

Tripti Nagwekar (Owner)     10 November 2012

First of all your duty is to tell your deemed tenant to leave the place within one month.  If he does so, take the possession of the room.  If your tenant is of frivolous naturre, he would say he requires more time to search another room and he won't go out.  If you make him to sign agreement, he won't sign and nobody in India is going to throw him out and if you take shelter of law, it would take 20 years in lower court, 10 years in high court, 5 years in supreme.  So better tell that tenant to leave as early as possible because your room is already gone and if the tenant is thief definitely he would steal your room.

1 Like

GS (Engineer)     11 November 2012

Appreciate your feedback Tripti. Will heed to your advice. I will be speaking with my folks about this soon and hope this works out.

Thank you very much.


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