NIRANJAN LAL SHARMA Vs. VED KUMARI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner, feeling aggrieved by an order dated 4/01/2001 passed by learned Additional Rent Controller under Section 14-C and 14-D of the Rent Control Act, 1958 (hereinafter referred to as the Act only), has come to this Court under Section 25-B (8) of the Act praying that the impugned eviction order may be set aside and the eviction petition tiled by respondent No.1/landlady be dismissed.

(2.) The facts relevant for the disposal of this petition, briefly stated, are that respondent No.1 the landlady of Property No.3435-A, Gall Bajrang Ball, Bazar Sita Ram, Delhi filed a petition for eviction against the tenant, the deceased father of the petitioner, alleging that the premises in question which were non-residential in nature being a shop, were let out to the deceased tenant for commercial purposes. She alleged that she way one of the co-owners of the property in question alongwith her three sons. By virtue of an oral partition between her and her sons the ground floor, shown in yellow in the plan attached with the eviction petition, had come to her share jointly with her son Sunil Kumar. The shop in question which was under the tenancy of the petitioner had fallen to her share. She averred that she had recently retired as a Teacher from a school of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and was not having any space on the ground floor for use as a kitchen and as such she bonafide required the said shop for her residential use.

(3.) The father of the petitioner i.e. the tenant, late Niranjan Lal Sharma, after obtaining leave to defend the petition, filed a written statement disputing the plea of respondent-landlady that she required the premises in question for her bonafide residential need. The eviction petition was stated to be malafide and motivated with a desire to earn premium and pagri for the reason that it was a commercial area. It was also pleaded that the shop in question was incapable of being use for residential purpose. It was submitted that there were no sanitary facilities in the premises in question. The oral partition as set up by the respondent-landlady was disputed and it was stated to be a false and fabricated plea with a view to oust him from his shop in which he was a tenant for the last 40 years. It way added that this shop could fetch more than Rs.15 lakhs by way of Payri, if it was to be let out today. According to him, it was unbelievable that a shop worth Rs.15 lakhs would be used by the respondent- landlady as a kitchen. In para 4 of the written statement it was specifically pleaded that after ousting another tenant from the adjoining shop the sons of the landlady had started doing business in said shop and using the back portion as a godown for their business purposes. It was stated that the landlady and her sons were living on the first and second floor of the house and they had sufficient accommodation for their residential use in as much as the property in question was a three storeyed building comprised of 12 rooms, apart from store, kitchen, 4 bathrooms and latrine. The history of previous litigation was also given to show that respondent No.1 landlady was hell-bent to throw the petitioner out of the shop in question as this area was Asia's biggest hardware and sanitary market and the value of the property had gone up sky high.