Deepak s 02 May 2020

Owner neither giving lease amount nor extending lease

Hello Experts,

Please help me what action I should take. The problem is as below.

We have been staying in house in Bangalore since 2010 and renewing lease after every 3 years since house was convenient for us. Our lease agreement ended in 2016 and we have been asking them to return lease money since then because owner is not managing things well. They ll collect money from all tenents but not pay the water,electric bill & use the money for thier own. Authorities are disconnecting electric connection every now and then.Now our owner says that in 2017 she has transferred the building to her daughter.If there is anything to ask we should ask with her daughter.We had contacted her daughter many times and asked for lease refund or renew the lease since 2 years. Her daughter is not trustworthy and she always give some reason and do not show up during scheduled appointment.Now she has switched off her mobile and not answering calls. All tenents in our building are having same problem. If we go to landlord( old lady) she says to check with her daughter but her daughter phone is switched off and we don't know where she stays. We all tenents are still in possession of premises and not understanding what to do
further. Please guide us what we can do to recover our money ?

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5 Replies

G.L.N. Prasad (Retired employee.) 03 May 2020

As you are in Group, you can certainly afford a local advocate and make an approach to him as a group and you can find a good solution.

P. Venu (Advocate) 03 May 2020

What do you mean by "we have been asking them to return lease money"? what have been the conditions in the lease deed as to vacation of premises?

Deepak s 03 May 2020

Hello P.Venu sir,
Thanks for your reply. Our lease terminated on December 2017. As per lease agreement we had informed owner 3 months before to return the lease money and we will vacate house after receiving lease amount. But we have not received our lease amount so far even after 2 years.

G.L.N. Prasad (Retired employee.) 03 May 2020

Practices may differ in some cities. What I understand from the query is that there was a practice in some cities to collect huge lumpsum deposit calling as "Pugdi" which will be refunded at the time of vacation. A new tenant agrees to take the building on such pagidi (No rent-No interest) and after collecting the new pagidi (which some may call it as lease amount/advance which may not be correct technically) from the would-be, the amount will be refunded to the old tenant. Now the difficulty is that original landlords may not be believing in the city, and unless the portion/house is vacant, a new tenant will not come, and the landlord is not having that liquid amount to get the present tenant vacated.

(In view of this for senior citizens, all PSU banks introduced a scheme and they advance amounts as a reverse mortgage loan to senior citizens in lumpsum or as overdraft and either Senior citizen can pay or his legal heirs can repay. If there are no instructions, banks dispose of the building, adjust to their lending, and refund the amount to the notified legal heir. Unfortunately, the scheme has not received adequate facility though it serves the real needs and necessities of senior citizens. There are several citizens with huge fixed assets worth crores of rupees and may not have liquidity in case of emergency and a distress sale is the only option to senior citizens till the introduction of the scheme. There are several cases wherein senior citizens were duped by advancing them petty amounts and taking the agreement to sell etc or confiscating properties by force.. If a tenant is sincere, he can with the permission of those landladies can bargain and find a new tenant, collect such amount, appropriate the legally entitled amount to him, and then paying surplus to the landlady. )

Deepak s 03 May 2020

No new tenants are coming to the house because it's old building and everyone is aware of the mismanagement of things from owner like not paying water & electricity bills in time. They had used money for their own use which was collected monthly from tenants.