Pradeep Oil Corporation Vs Municipal Corporation Of Delhi, on 6 April, 2011 SC

TPA - lease & license -A license may be created on deal or parole and it would be revocable. However, when it is accompanied with grant it becomes irrevocable. A mere license does not create interest in the property to which it relates. License may be personal or contractual. A licensee without the grant creates a right in the licensor to enter into a land and enjoy it. In Halsbury's Laws of England, 4th Edition, Vol. 27 at page 21 it is stated: - "license coupled with grant of interest: A license coupled with a grant of an interest in property is not revocable. Such a license is capable of assignment, and covenants may be made to run with it. A right to enter on land and enjoy a profit a prendre or other incorporeal hereditament is a license coupled with an interest and is irrevocable. Formerly it was necessary that the grant of the interest should be valid; thus, if the interest was an incorporeal hereditament, such as a right to make and use a watercourse, the grant was not valid unless tinder seal, and the license, unless so made, was therefore a mere license and was revocable but since 1873 the Court has been bound to give effect to equitable doctrines and it will restrain the revocation of a license coupled with a grant which should be, but is not, under seal."

14. Lease on the other hand, would amount to transfer of property....

A license, inter alia, (a) is not assignable; (b) does not entitle the licensee to sue the stranger in his own name; (c) it is revocable and (d) it is determined when the grantor makes subsequent assignment. The rights and obligations of the lessor as contained in the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 are also subject to the contract to the contrary. Even the right of assignment of leasehold property may be curtailed by an agreement....
It is well settled legal position that a deed must be read in its entirety and reasonably. The intention of the parties must also as far as possible be gathered from the expression used in the document itself....
an agreement for erection of oil storage tank together with pump house, chowkidar cabins, switch room, residential rooms and verandah for storing oil decanted from the railway tankers, which bring petroleum products to the site at which they are decanted, would amount to lease and not a license