### Acquisition of Property by Gift Deed From Spouse Does Not Attract Statutory Bar Under Section 14(6) of DRC Act

The petitioner, a widow and partially paralyzed business owner, filed eviction petitions under Section 14(1)(e) of the Delhi Rent Control Act (DRCA) for bona fide requirement of premises to start a business for herself and her daughters

The property’s title history involved a Will dated 28.01.2005 from a third party (Ashok Kumar Verma) to the petitioner’s late husband, Anil Gupta, who subsequently gifted the property to the petitioner via a registered Gift Deed dated 18.07.2022

The Rent Controller (RC) dismissed the petitions as premature, holding they were barred by Section 14(6) of the DRCA, which prohibits eviction filings within five years of acquiring a property by "transfer"

The petitioner challenged these orders, arguing that a gift from a husband to a wife/legal heir does not constitute a "transfer" intended to be barred by the statute

Whether the acquisition of tenanted premises by a wife from her husband through a registered Gift Deed constitutes a "transfer" within the meaning of Section 14(6) of the DRCA so as to bar an eviction petition for five years.

Whether a person who is a Class I legal heir can be considered a "stranger" to the title for the purposes of the five-year moratorium on eviction.

The court primarily applied Section 14(6) of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958, which restricts landlords who acquire premises by "transfer" from filing eviction petitions under the ground of bona fide requirement for five years from the date of acquisition

It relied on the Supreme Court precedent *V.N. Sarin v. Major Ajit Kumar Poplai*, which clarified that the legislative intent of Section 14(6) is to prevent "strangers" from using transfers as a device to evict tenants, and does not apply to partitions or cases where title previously resided within the same family unit

It further applied the principle from *Dr. R.C. Sakhuja v. R.P. Kholi*, which held that devolution by succession (testamentary or non-testamentary) is not a "transfer" under Section 14(6)

The Court reasoned that Section 14(6) was designed to curb mala fide transfers intended to circumvent tenant protections

In the present case, the Court observed that the petitioner is the widow and Class I legal heir of the previous owner

Applying the logic from *V.N. Sarin*, the Court found that the petitioner was not a "rank outsider" or "stranger" to the property, but possessed a vested legal right through lineage even prior to the execution of the Gift Deed

The Court distinguished this from a commercial sale to a third party, noting that even if the Gift Deed had not been executed, the petitioner would have inherited the property by operation of law upon her husband's death

Consequently, the Court determined that a gift between spouses/heirs constitutes a transition of title that does not trigger the five-year bar, as it does not fulfill the "mischief" the legislature sought to prevent

The High Court set aside the impugned orders dated 28.04.2023, restored the eviction petitions, and remanded the matters back to the learned SCJ-cum-RC (Central), Tis Hazari Courts, for fresh adjudication on merits