Madras High Court attempts to find solution for rental dispute between Tambaram Police Commissionerate and its landlords
Aerial view of the Madras High Court at Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: V. Ganesan
In an attempt to find a solution for a rental dispute between the landlords and the Tambaram Police Commissionerate functioning from a rented property, the Madras High Court, on Thursday (July 17, 2025), wanted to explore the possibility of allowing the Commissionerate to function in the rented premises for two more years on payment of a reasonable amount of enhanced rent with arrears.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh asked Advocate General (A-G) P.S. Raman as well as the counsel for the landlords to come up with a calculation memo by fixing ₹6.33 lakh as the monthly rent for 2022 and then increasing the amount by 10% for every year thereafter. The parties were asked to file the memo by July 21 for passing further orders in the writ petition filed by the landlords seeking vacant possession.
The landlords had approached the court contending that they had given their property on rent to the Commissionerate since January 2022 on the basis of an assurance given by the first Commissioner of Police M. Ravi that they would pay a monthly rent of ₹10.14 lakh. However, thereafter, the Tamil Nadu government, based on a Public Works Department (PWD) valuation, agreed to pay only ₹6.33 lakh per month.
Since the offer was not agreeable to them, the landlords insisted on issuing a direction to the Commissionerate to vacate their property. The A-G told the court that the petitioners could not seek such a direction by way of a writ petition just because the tenant happened to be a government entity. He said, all rental disputes must be raised only before the rent control courts.
He also stated that the landlords were blowing hot and cold by .claiming on one hand that they want to sell the property forthwith for settling their huge loan dues of ₹130 crore and on the other hand agreeing to let the Commissionerate continue if it pays a monthly rent of ₹18 lakh per month. He said, the landlords had themselves, at one point of time, agreed to accept ₹6.33 lakh albeit for a limited period of time.
The A-G also refuted the landlords’ charge of the Police Commissionerate having encroached upon adjacent lands and putting up unauthorised constructions.
Dehors all his submissions on the merits of the case, the A-G said, since the landlords were aged businessmen, they could be paid a reasonable amount of enhanced rent to be fixed by the court and said that he was wiling to file an affidavit of undertaking agreeing to vacate the property after two years since an alternative land had already been identified for construction of the Commissionerate.
The A-G said that the orders to be passed in the present writ petition should not be taken as a precedent since most government offices were functioning from rented premises and all those landlords too should not end up filing writ petitions in the future.
Published – July 17, 2025 04:09 pm IST