The Supreme Court has ruled that a person who has inherited tenancy rights under the erstwhile West Bengal Premises Tenancy Act, 1956, will enjoy uninterrupted possession of the rights and cannot be evicted under the West Bengal Tenancy Premises Act, 1997, after five years as provided under Section 2(g) of the new law.

The Supreme Court passed the ruling while setting aside the concurrent orders passed on June 29, 2022, by a single judge of Calcutta High Court and a division bench on December 8, 2022. Both the high court rulings had taken a contrary view that the new Act extinguished the tenancy rights of the erstwhile tenants who had inherited the tenancy rights under the 1956 Act.

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Prasanna B. Varale at the Supreme Court also expressed dismay over the “loose drafting” of the 1997 Act by the state legislature which had led to the confusion and the litigation.

“Statutory laws operate from the date of their enforcement i.e., prospectively. In case the legislature intends to make a law retrospective then such an intention of the legislature must be shown clearly and unambiguously in the statute itself. The Division Bench’s mere interpretation of a statutory provision will not make the law retrospective and take away the heritable rights of a tenant,” read the judgment authored by Justice Dhulia.

“In view of the above, we hold that Smt. Usha Mitra and the appellants jointly inherited the tenancy from Sh. S.K. Mitra, in the year 1970. Thus, the impugned judgment is liable to be set aside as appellants’ tenancy did not expire in the year 2006, by the introduction of 1997 Act, in the absence of a clear and unequivocal intention in the 1997 Act to have a retrospective operation. Accordingly, these appeals are allowed. Orders dated 29.06.2022 and 08.12.2022 of the Single Judge and the Division Bench respectively are set aside,” added the judgment.

The Supreme Court passed the ruling while allowing an appeal filed by tenant Rajesh Mitra and his sibling who had challenged the concurrent findings of the high court that his tenancy rights would be extinguished after five years of the enactment of the new law. Section 2(h) of the 1997 Act says the tenancy rights of a person who inherited the same from his parents would stand extinguished after five years.

Under the earlier 1956 Act, there were no restrictions on a person’s tenancy rights and Rajesh’s father was the original tenant from 1970. After he, his wife Usha Mitra was the tenant and post-her death, the tenancy rights were devolved to Rajesh on the suit premises of room 208, 2nd Floor, 252 A Park Street, Calcutta.

“We do not doubt the wisdom of the legislature but we are constrained to hold that the case at hand reflects loose drafting, as it seems to have created more problems than it sought to resolve.

Ambiguous drafting leads to manifold problems and generates lengthy litigations, as it has evidently done in the case at hand. There is no clarity in the 1997 Act to suggest that it extinguishes the rights of all tenants (who inherited tenancy rights under Old Act) retrospectively,” Justice Dhulia observed.