RAM SAROOP RAI Vs. LILAVATI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A brief back drop leads to the short point in issue. Chronic scarcity of accommodation in almost every part of the country has made eviction litigation explosively considerable, and the strict protection against ejectment, save upon restricted grounds, has become the' policy of the State. Rent Control Legislation to give effect to this policy exists everywhere, and we are concerned with one such in the State of U. P. (U. P. Act 13 of 1972). The legislature found that rent control law had a chilling effect on new building construction, and so, to encourage more building operations, amended the statute to release, from the shackles of legislative restriction, 'new constructions' for a period of ten years. So much so, a landlord who had let out his new building could recover possession without impediment if he instituted such proceeding within ten years of completion. The respondent is a landlady who claims to fill the bill in this setting and seeks to evict, the appellant-tenant untrammelled by the provisions of the Act. She has succeeded in both the courts below and the appellant challenges the order as illegal and vitiated by a basic error of approach.

(2.) We should have made short work of it had there not been the need for this court to set the sights right in the class of litigation where exemption from the operation of the Act is claimed on the ground that the construction is new and the case is filed within the ten-year moratorium. If the exemption is erroneously liberalised to frustrate the principal measure by failure to stick to basic legal principles, the jurisprudence of rent control may become too jejune to be socially effective. That is why we examine a few fundamentals here in the decisional process of this class of cases.

(3.) The area of controversy, factual and legal is small. The respondent purchased shop No. 66 in the city of Jhansi in 1969 from one Brij Mohan (DW 2), occupied the first floor and allowed the appellant, as tenant, to occupy the ground floor in 1970 on a lease deed which recited that the building was erected in 1965. In 1975 the present eviction action was instituted on the basis that the building was new, that the Act did not debar eviction of new constructions put up within ten years of the suit and so a decree was inevitable. The tenant resisted the claim on the plea that the building was constructed 50 years ago. The trial court negatived the defence and decreed eviction and this was upheld by the High Court.