EKAMBARA A Vs. K LEELA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Whether a person carrying on certain business in a premises of which he is a tenant, if acquires a building suitable for carrying on such business, can avoid eviction under clause (p) of the proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 21 of the Karnataka Rent Control Act, 1961 ("the Act"), merely because the building so acquired is intended to be used or is used for carrying on a different business, is the question which is raised for my determination in this revision petition.

(2.) Material facts, which have led to the raising of the above question for determination in this civil revision petition under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, are briefly these ; In the year 1976, Smt. K. Leela, the respondent here, filed in the Court of Munsiff at Mangalore ("trail Court") an eviction petition under Section 21 of the Act, against B. Narasappa, the father of the petitioners here, respecting a non-residential premises ('' the petition premises") in Mangalore town of which he had been a tenant on a monthly rent of Rs. 120/-. The case set out by her in the petition was that the said Narasappa became a tenant of the petition premises in the year 1958 on a term lease and carried on the hotel business therein under the name and style "Mehru Lunch Home" till a double storeyed building in that town became available to him, to which building he shifted his hotel business and carried on in it, the hotel business which was being run in the petition premises, under the name and style "Hotel Sujatha". The accommodation in that building, it has been stated, was increased by adding another storey to that building. Her further case was that after the shifting of the hotel business by the said Narasappa from the petition premises, he had sublet it to a third party. It was also her case that the petition premises had been damaged by making substantial structural alterations to the premises. The grounds raised by her for eviction of the said Narasappa from the petition premises on the basis of the said allegations, were (i) acquisition of a suitable building by Narasappa; (ii) unlawful subletting of the petition premises by him; and (iii) making permanent structural alterations to the petition premises by him, coming within the purview of clauses (p), (f) and (c) respectively of the proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 21 of the Act. In a statement of objections filed by him, Narasappa contested the claim for eviction made by the petitioner on various grounds. He, while denied the allegations made against him regarding unlawful subletting of the petition premises and making permanent structural alterations to the premises, also denied flatly the allegations made against him regarding acquisition of a building of his own for carrying on the hotel business which he had carried on in the petition premises. According to him, the allegations in the petition that he had obtained a suitable building near about for his restaurant business and he is running the same under the name and style "Hotel Sujatha" and he has increased the accommodation in that "Hotel Sujatha" by adding a third floor, were all false.

(3.) In the trial Court, while the respondent here (the landlord) examined herself as P.W. 1 in support of her case, Narasappa (the tenant) examined his son, Gangadhara, as D.W. 1 in support of his defence. That Gangadhara, in the course of his evidence, made specific admissions relating to acquisition of a suitable building by his father for running the hotel business, which was run in the petition premises, and also increasing the accommodation of the building so acquired by adding one more storey to it. The admissions ran thus: