RAM CHANDER Vs. GOKAL CHAND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These petitions, inter alia, raise a common question as to the circumstances in which leave should be granted to a tenant under sub -section (5) of Section 25B of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 (for short, the Act) Certain subsidiary questions also arise in individual petitions, which are common to some of them.

(2.) As is well -known the Act is a part of the rent control legislation enacted in Delhi, as indeed in the rest of I he country, to deal with an extraordinary situation that arose soon after the outbreak of the Second World War because of increasing pressure on urban immovable property. The situation was further aggravated in the years that followed on account of increasing population explosion and the influx of large number of displaced persons from the territories, now forming part of Pakistan, in the wake of the partition of India and the consequent pressure on land in urban areas. The rent control legislation, throughout the country was intended to strike a reasonable balance between the requirements of the tenants for adequate protection against the aggressive design of greedy landlords to evict the tenants or to increase the rates of rent to an exorbitant limit and the need to assure to the landlords, whose normal legal rights were sought to be restricted, the minimum right to receive the agreed rent, lawful increase of it and to evict the tenants who may be guilty of misconduct and for other grounds within certain circumscribed limits. These measures were continued after the promulgation of the Constitution of India with an even greater bias in favour of the tenants, who, by and large, represented the weaker segment of society as compared to the urban propertied class, as part of large scale social legislation having its genesis in the need to bring about social and economic justice through legislative action, inter alia, by the redistribution of wealth on an equitable basis, elimination of exploitation in all forms and establishment of a truly egalitarian social order.

(3.) Among the grounds which could justify the eviction of a tenant was clause (e) of proviso to sub -section (1) of Section 14 of the Act, according to which the tenant may be evicted from the premises "let for residential purposes" if such premises were "bona fide" required by the landlord for occupation as a residence for himself or for any member of his family dependent on him provided the landlord "has no other reasonably suitable residential accommodation". Explanation to clause (e) defines the expression "premises let for residential purposes" as including "any premises which having been let for use as a residence or, without the consent of the landlord, used incidentally for commercial or other purposes". By the Delhi Rent Control (Amendment) Ordinance (No. 24 of 1975), 1975 (for short, the Ordinance) the Act was amended with a three -fold object : one was the much needed protection to the heirs of a statutory tenant after the death of such a tenant. The other was a sequal to Government decision to deprive an allottee of Government accommodation if he owned a residential accommodation either in his own name or in the name of his wife or dependent child. The third was to introduce a summary procedure for trial of applications in which eviction was sought either on the ground of requisition to vacate Government accommodation on account of ownership of residential accommodation or on the ground that the owner landlord bona fide required the premises in terms of clause (e). To achieve the last two objects Section 14A and Sections 25A, 25B and 25C were added to the Act. Section 14A conferred on a landlord the right to evit a tenant, if, being a person in occupation of any residential premises allotted to him by the Central Government or such other authorities, he was required to vacate such residential accommodation on the ground of his ownership of residential accommodation in the Union territory of Delhi. Section 25B provided that applications for eviction based on the ground set out in clause (e) of proviso to subsection ( 1) of Section 14 shall be summarily tried in accordance with the new procedure. The Ordinance was issued on December 1, 1975 and came into force on that date itself. The Ordinance was eventually replaced by the Delhi Rent Control (Amendment) (No. 18 of 1976), 1976 (for short, the Amending Act). The Amending Act continued the provisions of the Ordinance with the difference that the summary procedure introduced by the Ordinance was also extended to applications for eviction on the ground set out in Section 14A of the Act, a procedure which had been confined under the Ordinance to applications for eviction on the ground set out in clause (e) of the proviso to sub -section (1) of Section 14. The Amending Act came into force on February 9, 1976, but by virtue of sub -section (2) of Section I it "shall be deemed to have come into force on the 1st day of December, 1975", i.e. the date of the enforcement of the Ordinance.