P I GEORGE Vs. ADDITIONAL MUNSIFF ERNAKULAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant is the tenant, whose writ petition to vacate concurrent orders by the authorities under the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, No. XVI of 1959, hereafter referred to as the Act, been disallowed by a learned Judge. The facts relevant for deciding the appeal are not in dispute, though the correctness of the grounds on which the eviction been ordered was challenged before the learned judge; and the challenge has been repeated before us. The appellants learned advocate has urged several arguments for the appeal being allowed, three of which are against the constitutionality of the Act, and two about the application of the provisions of the Act to the facts of the case. For better appreciation of the aforesaid grounds, we should now state the facts in the case.

(2.) The appellant was a teacher in the S. R.V. Government High School, Ernakulam from 1952 to July 1956, and has since been promoted as the Headmistress of the Government High School, Elamkunnapuzha. In November 1952 she was allotted the house in Ernakulam, which she has now been ordered to vacate and the ownership of the house has since changed hand, the landlord before us having purchased it from the owner who owned it when the Rent Controller allotted it to the appellant. A ground has been taken in the writ petition about the transfer not being bona fide because the relation between the parties had earlier become strained. It is averred that the stipulated rent being Rs. 75/- the appellant moved the Rent Controller for fixation of the fair rent, which in the middle of 1953 was fixed at Rs 60/-, that the reduction strained the relation between the owner and the appellant; and that because the former owned several houses and could not evict, he offered the house to the present owner, a practising lawyer, who purchased it on September 16, 1957. The appellants case is that the deal was with a view to get the appellant evicted and about two months later, the new landlord filed the petition before the Rent Controller for evicting the appellant on the ground of the house being required for the landlords personal residence the building in which the new owner was then living on rent, being unsuitable. The aforesaid proceedings were begun under the Travancore - Cochin Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Order, 1950, and the whole of the following year appears to have been taken up with determination of whether the petition should be allowed. No decision had been reached when the Act came into force on April 3, 1959, and it repealed the Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Order, under which the proceedings been initiated. Among other things, S.11 (3) of the Act provides as follows:-

(3.) We would emphasise in the beginning that when exercising powers under Art.226, we do not act as though we were appellate authority deliberating on the correctness or otherwise of conclusion on facts by the lower tribunals. It follows that writ of certiorari would not be issued unless the decisions sought to be vacated be vitiated by error of jurisdiction, by legal error apparent on the face of the record, or by failure to observe principles of natural justice. Those being the grounds on which the aforesaid writ would be issued and we take the appellant in this case to be asking for such a writ. It further follows that the factual sufficiency of the ground, on which the lower tribunals have directed eviction, would not be scrutinised by us in this proceeding the correctness of such findings being justiciable by proper authorities in exercise of their appellate powers, which we are now exercising.