RENA DREGO Vs. LALCHAND SONI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) A landlady had rented out her flat situate at Bandra (West) in Bombay (now Mumbai) to a tenant in 1969 for a rent of Rs. 200/- per month. As years passed by, she found it difficult to accommodate her large family in the small residential apartment where she is presently living. So, she moved the Court in 1977 for a decree of eviction of her tenant from her flat at Bandra. Of course, she cast the net very wide covering a variety of grounds to have a decree for eviction, but what ultimately survived among them was the ground envisaged in Section 13(1)(g) of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 (for short 'the Act'), i.e., bona fide and reasonable requirement of the tenanted premises for her own occupation. Though, she was non-suited by the trial Court (which is the Small Causes Court, Bombay), she went in appeal to the appellate Bench of the Court of Small Causes, where she got a decree for eviction on the ground mentioned above. But the said decree did not enure to her benefit as the same was later upset by the High Court of Bombay when the tenant filed a writ petition under Article 227 of the Constitution for quashment of the same. This appeal, by special leave, has been filed by the landlady impugning the aforesaid judgment of the Bombay High Court.

(3.) It is to be pointed out, right now itself, that the need of the landlady for additional accommodation in view of her large family was recognised by the trial Court. Still she was non-suited by the trial Court on the premise that her pleadings on that score were scanty. Appeal Court after concurring with the finding which was favourable to the landlady did not take the inadequacy in the pleadings as capable of fatally affecting her cause. Hence the appeal Court found no hurdle in granting the decree of eviction. But a learned single Judge of the High Court who quashed the said decree held the landlady guilty of two wrongs. First is that she did not speak the truth in her evidence that her eldest son (whose name is Giles Drego) has his own flat where he is living with his family. (The landlady has admitted in her reply affidavit filed in the High Court, during the pendency of the writ petition, that her son Giles Drego and his wife are joint owners of a flat situate at Vasai in Thane District). Second is that, she failed to specify the plinth area of the apartment in which she is presently living with her family.