PONNIAH CHETTIAR Vs. S RAJAGOPAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE two revision petitions are preferred by one Ponniah Chettiar who is admittedly one of the tenants under the respondent and against whom an eviction order was sought before the Rent Controller (District Munsif) at Periakulam in H. R. C. O. P. No.45 of 1978 on his file under section 10 (3) (c) of the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rant Control) Act, I960 thereinafter referred to as the Act) and granted by the Rent Controller, which order was confirmed on appeal by the appellate authority (Principal Subordinate Judge, Dindigul), in C. M. A. No. 40 of 1980.

(2.) WE shall first set out the facts of the case, giving rise to these revision petitions, before discussing the questions of law raised by the petitioner in this case. It will be convenient to refer to the revision-petitioner as the tenant and the respondent herein as the landlord, in this judgment.

(3.) MR. Peter Francis, learned counsel appearing for the revision petitioner, raised the following two contentions challenging the validity of the concurrent orders passed by the authorities below:(1) A single petition for evicting two different tenants in respect of two independent shop bearing two different Door Numbers, fetching different rates of rent. the tenancies commencing from two different dates, is not maintainable and as such the whole proceedings are vitiated.(2) When the buildings in question are non-residential in character, the landlord cannot ask for eviction in respect of two shops out of the four, only for residential purposes as and by way of additional accommodationPoint No. 1: In support of the first contention, MR. Peter Francis referred to the following decisions. Relying on the observation made by a Division Bench of this Court consisting of Rajamannar, C J., and Chandra Reddy, J. as he then was, in Venkatachari v. Court of Small Causes, Madras1, viz.:"Though the definition of a building in the Act includes a portion of a building, it does not mean that the owner of a house, portions of which have been let separately, cannot file an application for obtaining possession of the entire house as a building'.He contends that the owner can ask for eviction of only the entire building but not a part of the building, in a single petition. On going through the above judgment it is very clear that the law laid down by the Bench therein is that a single petition seeking an order of eviction of the various tenants occupying various portions of the same building, is well maintainable. Barring that, it cannot be said that the above ruling is to the effect that in case the landlord asks for eviction of the tenants occupying the various portions of a building, he should file the petition for eviction of all the tenants or that he cannot maintain a petition seeking eviction of some of the tenants in the said building. Therefore, I do not see any force in the contention of the learned counsel, based on the above decision, that the landlord in this case would have been justified only had he filed the eviction petition against all the tenants occupying the four tenants. Hence, the above decision will not be of any help to the proposition put forth by the learned counsel for the revision petitioner. On the other hand, this decision will be of much help to the landlord as it enables him to file a single petition for eviction of two or more tenants occupying portions of the same building.