H. PADMANABHA RAO Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this batch of Writ Petitions, the petitioners who are tenants of non-residential premises in the city of Bangalore and elsewhere in the State have questioned the constitutional validity of Section 31 of the Karnataka Rent Control Act ('the Act' for short).

(2.) IN order to appreciate the question arising for consideration, it is necessary to set out briefly the scheme of the Act. The Preamble to the Act reads :-

(3.) THE petitioner's grievance is that the above classification was made by the Legislature in the year 1961 when the value of Rupee was about cent per cent and therefore, the Legislature might have considered that persons who were tenants of non-residential premises on a monthly rent of more than Rs. 500/- were not persons who were required to be protected against eviction, and it may be that the classification could not at that point of time be regarded as having had no rational basis. But the contention of the petitioners is that in the last 25 years after the commencement of the Act, the basis for the classification made under Section 21 had ceased to exist long back in view of the steep fall in the value of the Rupee and the steep rise in the rentals and therefore, even though the exemption then had the nexus to the object sought to be achieved by the Legislature, by efflux of time the nexus has disappeared and as a result the provision has become discriminatory and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. The petitioners have stated that the non-residential premises in respect of which monthly rent was much below Rs. 500/- in the year 1961 was now far more than Rs. 500/- and that if the intention of the Legislature was to protect tenants of non-residential buildings whose monthly rent was Rs. 500/- or less in 1961, by the force of the same reasoning the said exemption must have been extended to premises whose monthly rental was more than Rs. 500/- by raising the limit, having due regard to the rate of increase in rental value and the fall in value of the rupee. As the same had not been done, the Section has become violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.