Research › Search › Judgment

Rajasthan High Court · body

2018 DIGILAW 2162 (RAJ)

Legal Heirs of Smt. Munni Devi v. Arvind Choudhary

2018-10-30

SANDEEP MEHTA

body2018
JUDGMENT : SANDEEP MEHTA, J. 1. By way of this writ petition, the petitioners herein being the applicants before the Rent Tribunal, Bhilwara, have approached this court for assailing the order dated 12.09.2018 passed by the Tribunal in the Rent Control Case No. 44/2014, whereby the application filed by the respondent-tenants to discard the agreement on the ground that the same was improperly stamped was disposed of with a direction to forward the stamp in question to the DIG (Stamps) for impounding. 2. Mr. Rakesh Arora, learned counsel representing the petitioners, vehemently urged that the document in question is not covered within the definition of lease. He relied upon clause 33 of the Schedule to the Rajasthan Stamp Act and urges that the agreement was not for a term of more than 20 years and thus, the same could not be treated to be a conveyance and should not have been impounded. 3. However, the said contention of Mr. Arora is totally untenable in view of clause 33(a)(ii) of the Schedule to Stamp Act, which clearly prescribes that where the lease purports to be for a term in excess of twenty years or in perpetuity or where the term is not mentioned, the same duty as on a conveyance on the market value of the property which is subject matter of the lease would be chargeable. Manifestly, the rent agreement, on the strength whereof the suit for eviction was filed, does not prescribe any time period and thus, it has to be considered to be a perpetual lease and hence, the stamp duty thereupon would be chargeable as that on a conveyance. Since the agreement in question was not properly stamped, the trial court was perfectly justified in directing impounding thereof and forwarding the same to the DIG (Stamps) for charging proper stamp duty. The trial court apparently committed no error, illegality or infirmity while passing the impugned order and hence, I am not inclined to interfere therein while exercising this court's supervisory writ jurisdiction. 4. Accordingly, the writ petition as well as the stay petition are dismissed as being devoid of merit.