STANDARD CASHEW INDUSTRIES Vs. N KRISHNAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The tenant in a rent control petition is the revision petitioner. The building sought to be evicted is a running cashew factory. The landlord-respondent obtained rights in the property as per a document dated 20-8-1974. After waiting for the statutory period he filed the petition on two grounds, namely, bona fide need and waste. The claim for bona fide need found favour with alt the courts. Hence this revision.

(2.) The petitioner's counsel urged two points before me : (1) that on the admitted facts of the case, the claim of the landlord will not come within Section 11 (3) of the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act and (2) that the lease in question is one falling outside the purview of the Act,

(3.) Before the court of the Rent Controller the case of the tenant was that the petition related to a building and land held under a licence and not a lease. It was also contended that the claim put forward did not amount to bona fide need. The first court held against the contentions. Before the appellate authority also the same case was repeated without success. Before the revisional court the case of licence appears to have been given up obviously because the petition and the counter proceeded on the footing that Ext. A 2 is only a lease. The revisional court has observed that it was only at the evidence stage that the case of licence was put forward. The case put forward, according to him, was that Ext. A 2 is basically a lease of land or at any rate a composite lease and therefore the provisions of the Act did not apply. That court found that Ext. A 2 was not a lease of the land nor a composite lease. It accepted the case based on bona fide need and thus dismissed the revision. The ground taken now in the revision petition as ground No. 9 is that the courts below should have held that the lease was a composite lease outside the purview of the Rent Control Act. But what is argued before me is not that it is a composite lease but that it is a lease of a running factory and not a lease of a building. This contention was rested largely on the decision reported in Dwarka Pd. v. Dwarka Das (AIR 1975 SC 1758) and it is contended that the case on hand came squarely within the said decision. Though this question in its present form was not put forward before the courts below, I shall deal with it since it can be said to be a jurisdictional issue. But before doing so, I will refer to the necessary facts of the case.