The Bombay High Court recently allowed tenants of a Mumbai building that belonged to the Custodian of Enemy Property under Section 3 of the Enemy Property Act 1968 to restore it at their own expense.
The property has been in existence since 1937, and the proprietors of the land and building fled to Pakistan following Partition. The renters say that their parents became tenants in 1957 and that the rent was paid to the former landlady, Hamida Begum, aka Kishori Shaikh, a Pakistani national.
Hamida Begum’s property was later declared enemy property and turned over to the Custodian of Enemy Property under the Enemy Property Act. Following the 1965 India-Pakistan war, this Act was passed in 1968.
The Ministry of Home Affairs constituted the Custodian of Enemy Property, which is empowered to take appropriate action in relation to Pakistani nationals’ properties in India. Since then, the renters have been paying rent to the custodian.
The spacious bungalow on the Worli seafront has five tenants. Four of them had asked the court for permission to restore the building before the monsoon arrived in June.
A division bench of Justice Gautam Patel and Justice Neela Gokhale observed, “The building is very old. It has deteriorated over time. This
was brought to the attention of the Custodian at various times.”
The petitioners asked for permission to proceed with the renovations because the building was in bad shape.
Appearing for the custodian, Advocate Advait Sethna displayed multiple correspondences with the executive engineer of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) since early February 2023, including requests for repair estimates, reports, or surveys of work to be done.
“Unsurprisingly, little progress has been made in that regard,” the bench noted.
The bench, however, accepted the tenants’ assertion that they would carry out the repairs at their own expense and that they “would not at any time be invoked or utilized by them to seek any equities against the Custodian of Enemy Property.”
The tenants have been notified by the custodian that they must enter into leave and license agreements with the Custodian of Enemy Property, or else eviction procedures would be begun under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Act 1971. This has been challenged separately by the tenants.
The division bench further stated that the tenants, not the Custodian, would bear accountability for the quality of the repairs performed.
