In Brief
A longtime tenant of a property entered an agreement to sell with his landlady for Rs. 9 lakh. The landlady later filed for eviction while the tenant filed a suit for specific performance. The trial court directed the tenant to pay higher stamp duty, treating the agreement as a conveyance rather than a sale agreement. The High Court upheld this decision. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that because the tenant had possessed the property for 50 years before the agreement and the eviction decree later confirmed the ongoing tenancy, the agreement was not a conveyance for stamp duty purposes. The possession was not related to the sale agreement and there was no surrender of tenancy rights.
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