VED PRAKASH GUPTA Vs. HANS RAJ TANEJA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal under section 39 of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958, is directed against an order of remand made by the learned Rent Control Tribunal on 12-3-1968 after allowing the appeal of Shri Hans Raj Taneja and Smt. Raj Dulari from the order of the learned Rent Controller dated 14/9/1967 dismissing their application for eviction of the tenant who is the appellant in this Court. The learned Rent Controller disallowed the plea of a bona fide requirement on the ground that the application for eviction did not contain an averment or allegation that the landlords seeking ejectment for their bona fide requirements, were the owners of the premises in question. I need not go into the other ground on which also the eviction order was claimed and which was repelled.

(2.) On appeal, the learned Rent Control Tribunal, following a decision of this Court, in which it was observed that the statutory requirement of the petitioner being the owner of the premises from which eviction is sought, is not required to be stated as such in the petition for eviction reversed the decision of the Rent Controller. Dealing with the evidence on the record, the learned tribunal took into account several pieces of documentary evidence and came to the conclusion that the appellanls before him were the owners of the premises in dispute. On this conclusion. the order of the Controller dismissing the application for eviction was, as observed earlier, reversed and the case was remanded to the Rent Controller for decision on the other points arising in the controversy.

(3.) On second, appeal in this Court, the learned counsel for the tenant-appellant has tried to show that under the law, it is essential for the landlord-petitioner to expressly plead in his application that he is the owner of the premises of which he needs possession for his own personal bona fide requirement. My attention has, however, been drawn by the respondents' learned counsel to the application for ejectmen in which reliance has been placed on a notice served by the landlords on the tenant. That notice was attached with the application and it expressly contained an assertion that the landlords were the owners of the premises in dispute. The documents attached with and relied on in the pleadings may well be considered to be a part of the pleadings. Statements in the pleadings may be taken to be supplemented by and to include, any fact stated or to be inferred by necessary implication from the documents annexed to and filed with the said pleading (See Dorab Ally v. Khajah.) The pleadings have not to be construed in a narrow technical or pedantic manner and the attitude towards them should not be unduly rigid. The sole object of the pleadings is that each side may be fully alive in advance to the questions to be argued so that they may have an opportunity of meeting them, inter alia, by adducing appropriate evidence. Considered from this point of view, the contents of the notice should be taken into account as supplementing the averments in the application. It would not be out of place at this stage to point out that the tenant had nowhere in this lengthy written statement pleaded that the application was defective in the sense that it did not contain an averment of the landlords being the owners of the property in dispute for the purpose of relief under section (1) I.L.R. 3 Col. 806 (P.C.). 14(2)(e) of the Delhi Rent Control Act. A plea of this nature, it may be pointed out, has to be specifically taken in the pleadings. It is axiomatic, as just observed, that the pleadings are meant to disclose to the opponent the case of the party so that no surprise is flung on the adversary. In the case in hand, applying the rule enunciated above, I have not the least doubt that the view taken by the Rent Controller was too hyper-technical. But this apart, if he had only cared to look at the pleadings alongwith the documents, he would probably have not come to the conclusion he actually did. Holding, therefore, as I do, that in the application the plea of ownership must be deemed to be included, I consider it unnecessary to go into the question whether, in order to succeed under section 14(l)(e) of the Delhi Rent Control Act, it is imperative for the landlord to expressly include in his pleadings a positive averment that he is the owner of the premises in question. I need hardly observe that I have expressed an opinion of an earlier occasion against such inclusion being mandatory.