K GOPALAN NAIR Vs. V KAMALAMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petition has been filed to revise the judgment of the Appellate Authority (Subordinate Judge), Nagercoil, reversing the order of the Rent Controller (Principal District Munsif) Kuzhithurai, in H R. C. No. 2 of 1974 and directing the eviction of the petitioner from a nonresidential building on the ground that the building is required for the respondent's husband to start a textile business.

(2.) THE allegation made in the eviction petition so far as this ground, with which alone we are concerned in this civil revision petition, is that the respondent's husband Kandaswami is a Government contractor and that the petition-mentioned building is required for his use. Though the petitioner before me has not disputed in his counter-statement the fact that the respondent's husband is a Government contractor, he has contended that the requirement is not bona fide. THE learned Rent Controller accepted the contention of the petitioner and rejected the petition. But on appeal the learned Appellate Authority found that the honest desire of the respondent's husband, examined as P W. 1. coupled with the genuine need for requiring the demised property to start a business is the objective test to decide the question whether the landlady requires the demised property bona fide for own use and that the evidence does not justify the conclusion that the desire coupled with the need to start a textile business in the demised property by the husband of the landlady is dishonest to serve any oblique purpose. In this view he allowed the appeal.

(3.) MR. Kumaraswami Pillai the learned counsel appearing for the respondent, invited my attention to the decision of Nainar Sundaram, J., in K. Rengaswamy Iyengar v. Postmen's Co-operative Credit Society through its President and another1 which, in my opinion, only lays down that it is not open to the tenant to contend that the landlord, who is already carrying on one business, is not entitled to ask for a non-residential building for the purpose of carrying on another business of a different kind. That decision will not apply to the fasts of the present case. In my opinion the conclusion of the learned Rent Controller is right and that the Appellate Authority erred in ordering eviction on this ground.