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A family in north Bengaluru ran out of cooking gas. They booked a refill — it didn’t arrive. With no other option, they set up a traditional firewood stove outside their home and cooked their meals.
Their landlord saw the smoke. He told them to leave.
The incident, reported by News18 Kannada and Asianet Newsable, took place in Ashwath Nagar, under the Byatarayanapura area of Bengaluru. One member of the family suffers from kidney and liver problems. They had no gas. They had nowhere else to go.
“We couldn’t get a gas cylinder, so we cooked with the stove. We did this because we had no other option. Now the owner has made us vacate the house,” the tenant said.
Table of Contents
The LPG Shortage Context {#lpg-context}
The Bengaluru family’s situation did not arise in isolation. The city has been experiencing a disruption in LPG cylinder supply, with wait times at several gas agencies extending to seven to fifteen days. The disruption is linked to global fluctuations in oil and gas prices amid the ongoing West Asia conflict.
Panic bookings have risen. Many households that would normally receive a cylinder within a day or two have been waiting far longer. For a family with a sick member and no alternative cooking source, a wait of several days without gas is not a logistical inconvenience — it is a crisis.
What the Landlord Said {#landlord-said}
[IMAGE BLOCK 2 — Mid-article]
The landlord did not deny asking the family to vacate, but presented his reasoning as a matter of property safety and mutual conduct rather than a simple eviction.
“I told them not to cook with the stove, but they continued to do so, and I asked them to vacate,” he told News18 Kannada. He added that the tenants had not kept the house clean and that firewood smoke posed a safety risk to the broader building.
“If others start using stoves, it could cause accidents. There are 20 houses here. If everyone does this, it will be a problem,” he said.
He also stated that he returned the tenants their security deposit — which he offered as evidence that the parting was handled fairly. He claimed the tenants chose to leave the same night, rather than being thrown out overnight without notice.
Is This Eviction Legal? {#is-it-legal}
The legal picture here is more complex than either a simple yes or no.
What the law generally requires:
Landlords in India are required to provide prior written notice before asking tenants to vacate — typically as specified in the rental agreement, and in accordance with applicable state law. In Karnataka, eviction without due process is not permitted except under specific, well-defined conditions.
Immediate eviction — or pressure to leave the same night — is generally not a legally valid process, even when a landlord has legitimate concerns. The correct route is a written notice, a specified timeline, and if necessary, a rent authority or court order.
What tenants can do when wrongfully evicted:
Tenants can challenge the eviction through local rent authorities. If due process was not followed, the eviction itself may be legally contestable — regardless of the reason behind it.
The safety argument:
A landlord can raise objections to tenant behaviour that poses a genuine risk to the property or other residents. Firewood smoke that could damage paint and walls — and pose fire risk in a building with 20 units — is a real concern, not an entirely unreasonable one. Whether that concern justifies immediate eviction rather than a written warning is where the legal grey area begins.
Related read: 5 essential rent agreement clauses every tenant must know ?
The Legal Grey Area {#grey-area}
This case sits at an uncomfortable intersection.
The tenant has an immediate, urgent, health-related need to cook food. There is an ongoing supply disruption beyond their control. A family member is unwell. The alternative — not cooking — is not a realistic option.
The landlord has a legitimate property concern — smoke damage to walls and ceilings in a multi-unit building, and fire safety risk if the practice spreads.
Indian tenancy law does not generally allow landlords to evict tenants for single incidents of rule-bending — particularly when the tenant is responding to an emergency and the rule in question (no firewood cooking) may not even be written into the rental agreement.
If the restriction on firewood cooking was not specified in the rental agreement, the landlord’s ability to evict on that basis is even weaker.
What would have been appropriate: a written warning, a reasonable timeline, and a documented path to resolution — not a same-day departure.
What This Case Really Exposes {#what-it-exposes}
Beyond the legal question, this incident reveals something broader about how Indian rental relationships handle crises.
When an external disruption — a gas shortage, a pandemic, a supply chain failure — creates a situation that a rental agreement never anticipated, both landlord and tenant are left without a clear framework. The result is too often a power imbalance: the person with the keys and the deposit has leverage; the person with the sick family member and no gas does not.
The Model Tenancy Act 2021 provides some framework, but its adoption across states has been uneven. Karnataka’s own rental rules are still evolving.
What would help: explicit habitability clauses in rental agreements that address force majeure situations — supply disruptions, natural disasters, infrastructure failures — and define what constitutes a valid grounds for eviction versus a situation that requires accommodation.
Final Thought
A family ran out of gas during a city-wide shortage linked to a global conflict. They cooked on a wood stove. They were told to leave.
Whether the eviction was technically legal depends on what the rental agreement said and whether due process was followed — details that are not fully public. What is not in doubt is that the family left. That night. With nowhere to go.
Whatever the law says in fine print, that outcome is hard to describe as just.
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