C L SETH Vs. DEVKI NANDAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Respondent 1 is a Govt. servant. His wife is owner of a house in which petitioners are tenants. Govt. order of eviction was passed against respondent 1. Both respondents sued petitioners u/s 14A (1). Petitioners sought permission to defend u/s 25 (B) (5)' On refusal they approached High Court. Relying on Ram Chandra Vs. Gokal Chand 1977. Rajdhani L.R. 73, High Court allowed the petition. Para 5 onwards, judgment is :-

(2.) On the question as to the scope of the provision of Section 14A (1) particularly where the property was admittedly owned by the wife in her own right I arrived at following conclusion ; Section 14A(1) entitles a landlord to evict a tenant if he is required to vacate Government accommodation on the ground that he 'owns, in the Union territory of Delhi, a residential accommodation either in his own name or in the name of his wife or dependent child'. The corresponding Government policy on which the provision in turn is based similarly renders an allottee of Government accommodation to the accommodation being withdrawn if the allottee owns either in his own name or in the name of his wife or dependent child' any residential accommodation in the Union territory of Delhi. The residential accommodation that thus disentitles an allottee of Government accommodation to keep it and consequently entitles him, by virtue of the cancellation of such allotment to evict the tenant must be accommodation that the allottee 'owns', whether in his own name or in the name of his wife or dependent child. Ownership of the property by the wife or the dependent child in their own right is clearly distinguishable from an allottee's ownership of the property in their name. What is important is the ownership of the allottee and while Section 14A (1) would cover cases where the wife or the dependent child is or are mere benamidars and the allottee is the real owner, Section 14A (I) would have no application to a case where the wife or the dependent child are not merdy ostensible but real owners of the property. It is, therefore, not possible to read the provision so as to extend the scope of the provisions to cases where the property was owned by a wife or a dependent child of the allottee in their own right. To do so would be to re-write the provision which would not be permissible with the aid of any rule of interpretation and would amount to a transgression in the field of legislation. Learned counsel for the landlady sought to justify an interpretation of the provisions favourable to the landlady on the ground that on an interpretation by the Government of the identical language of the Government policy which led to the amendment Government had decided, and the decision has since been reiterated, that an allottee of Government accommodation could be reqnired to vacate the accommodation even if his wife or dependent child owned any residential accommodatian in their own right. If that is to be true it is for the allottee to raise the matter either with the appropriate authorities or seek such legal remedies as may be open to him but it is not possible for this Court to interpret the provision in a manner which would not be justified with reference to the language of the provision merely because such an interpretation would be consistent with the way in which Government looks at an identically worked policy".

(3.) In this view of the matter the petitioners were entitled to leave to contest the application on the ground that the application was beyond the scope of Section 14A (1) the Act.