When a person rents out a property to a tenant, an agreement is signed between the two, outlining the terms under which the property is rented out.
If a tenant refuses or doesn’t pay the monthly rent, the landlord can go to court to evict the tenant from the house. These property disputes are quite common and several such cases are brought to court.
But what happens if the tenant leaves the property without paying the rent owed to the landlord?
Do you think the landlord can know the tenant’s current address and recover the unpaid amount?
A recent ruling by the Central Information Commission (CIC) has shed some light on the issue.
In a dispute, a landlord named V Venkatapathy sought information about the new address of a tenant who got away without paying the rent.
The owner of the property has filed a Right to Information (RTI) application with the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Tamil Nadu, in an effort to get details of the residential address of the tenant, DailyExpertNews reported. Financial Express.
The landlord claimed that the tenant, who works as a LIC Star Agent, evicted the property without notifying him and failed to pay the dues.
However, the report added that the CPIO rejected the owner’s application citing Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act 2005.
According to Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, “information pertaining to personal information the disclosure of which is not related to any public activity or interest, or which would cause an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Information Officer or the Government Information Officer or the Appellate Body, as the case may be, is satisfied that the greater public interest justifies the disclosure of such information.”
The landlord then approached the First Appellate Authority (FAA) and filed another plea on November 23, 2020. But the FAA also rejected the appeal and upheld CPIO’s injunction.
Following this, the owner filed a second appeal with the CIC, stating that the information requested had not been provided to him, according to the report.
In its decision of October 3, 2022, the CIC said that since the dispute concerns non-payment of rent, the complaint cannot be resolved under the RTI Act.
The CIC upheld the CPIO’s ruling, stating that the details of the tenant’s residential address could not be made public as it falls under their personal information.