R. RAMASWAMI CHETTIAR Vs. SRIPERUMBUDUR M. RAMASWAMI PILLAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal against the decree of the Principal Judge, City Civil Court, dismissing the appellant's suit for ejectment of his tenant (the respondent) and for mesne profits.

(2.) THE respondent and another entered into possession of the suit land on the 14th July, 1921, by Ex. D -1, which was a registered lease for a term of ten years, agreeing to pay Rs. 12 per month for the first five years and Rs. 15 per month for the second period of five years. According to the evidence of the respondent, which has not been refuted, the respondent alone continued in possession after the expiry of the lease in 1931. The other lessee is said to have died in 1936, where -upon his relatives took away his cows and took no further interest in the sheds which had been erected on the suit land after the execution of the lease in 1921. On the 15th July, 1944, after the suit land had been sold to the plaintiff by Bala -sundara Achari, son of Gangadhara Achari (the lessor under Ex. D -1) the defendant executed a rental agreement, Ex. P -1, in favour of the plaintiff. The question is whether on these facts the respondent is a tenant within the meaning of the Madras City Tenants Protection Act and is entitled to the benefit of those provisions. If he is, then the suit was rightly dismissed : if he was not then the plaintiff is entitled to succeed in his suit for ejectment.

(3.) IT is argued that after the termination of the lease a new tenancy was created, not only because one of the joint tenants ceased to be a tenant, but also because the respondent continued to hold over afterwards, and that therefore his rights under the new tenancy were not created before the commencement of the Act. With regard to the second point, it is true that the original tenancy came to an end an 1931; and it may be that the respondent continued under a new tenancy. That does not mean that he is not a tenant within the, meaning of the Act, entitled to the benefits of the Act; because the very definition of a tenant, as already pointed out, includes a person holding over after the termination of the tenancy.