JAGAN NATH MANCHANDA Vs. DISTRICT MAGISTRATE OF ALLAHABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application for issue of a proper writ or other direction directing the opposite parties, namely, the District Magistrate, Allahabad, & the Rent Control & Eviction Officer, Allahabad, to dispose of an application dated 5-4 1950 for fixation of rent made by the applicants. The facts narrated in the affidavit & not disputed by the opposite parties may be shortly stated.

(2.) The applicants are refugees & occupy certain quarters constructed by the Improvement Trust at Atala, a locality in Allahabad. The quarters were constructed after 1-7-1946. The Improvement Trust had constructed a number of similar quarters which were occupied by refugees. In February 1950, the Improvement Trust filed two suits against two of such refugees for the recovery of rent of the quarters occupied by them alleging that the rent sued for had been agreed upon between the parties. The applicants alleged that these suits were test suits & that no rent had been agreed upon at all between the Improvement Trust & any of the refugees. The applicants, therefore, fearing that Similar suits might be filed against them, made an application to the District Magistrate under Section 3A, Control of Rent and Eviction Act, for determination of a reasonable annual rent. While this application was pending, the civil suits filed by the Improvement Trust were decreed. There were applications in revision against those decrees, which are still pending in this Court.

(3.) When the applicants reminded the Rent Control & Eviction Officer to deal with their application for fixation of reasonable annual rent, he ordered that it was not necessary for him to fix the rent as the matter was sub judice & would be decided by the civil court in the suits already referred to. The applicants complain that the opposite parties have, by this order, refused to exercise a jurisdiction which clearly vested in them & thus deprived the applicants of a valuable right.