GEORGE VARGHESE Vs. AMMINI CHERIAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A landlady is seeking for an order to evict her tenant from a century old building which was rent out for residential purpose. The ground put forward is that she wants to reconstruct the building for accommodating her son and his family for a separate residence. Rent Control Court and Appellate Authority have upheld her claim and granted the order of eviction. So the tenant has filed this revision.

(2.) The main contention urged here is that despite its old age the building remains strong even now and it does not indicate any need for demolition and hence the ground envisaged in Sec.11(4)(vi) of the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1965 (for short 'the Act') is not available to the landlady. Counsel pleaded for a reconsideration of the decision of this Court in Balagangadhara Menon v. Peter ( 1984 KLT 845 ). In that decision a Division Bench has overruled the decision in Thanka v. Narayani ( 1981 KLT 502 ) rendered by a single Judge. The plea for reconsideration is advanced on the strength of the Supreme Court decision in M/s P. Orr and Sons (P) Ltd. v. Associated Publishers ( 1991 (1) SCC 301 ).

(3.) We may point out that another Division Bench of this court had occasion to consider the implication of the ratio in the aforesaid Supreme Court decision and the learned Judges (Varghese Kalliath and Manoharan. JJ.) have in Madhavan v. Leelamma ( 1991 (2) KLT 32 ) taken note that the decision in P. Orr and sons Ltd.'s case was based on a differently worded provision in the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act 1960 (for short 'the T.N. Act'). Under Sec.14(1) of the T.N. Act, satisfaction of the Rent Controller that the building is bona fide required by the landlord "for the immediate purpose of demolishing it" was made sine qua non for passing an order of eviction under the sub-section, if the purpose of such demolition is for erecting a new building on the said site. The Supreme Court in that decision has laid emphasis on the words "immediate purpose of demolishing" in the corresponding provision in the T.N. Act and held that "the legislative intent is that the proposal should be immediate or direct and not mediate or remote or indirect or secondary the conditions of the building need not be such as to warrant instant demolition, but it must be grave enough to need timely action and rule out undue or protracted delay". But S.11(4)(iv) of the Kerala Act is worded differently. The relevant portion reads thus: