AHMAD ALI Vs. MOHD JAMAL UDDIN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This second appeal by a plaintiff whose suit for arrears of rent and ejectment of the respondent from an accommodation governed by the Rent Control and Eviction Act has been dismissed by the courts below, came up for hearing before one of us and he referred it to a larger Bench on account of conflict among various authorities of this Court. Sri K. B. Sinha for the appellant does not press the appeal as regards the arrears of rent and we are concerned only with the question of ejectment of the respondent. The facts giving rise to the dispute are as follows. In 1952 a Munsif acting under Section 5 (4) of the Act made an order fixing Rs. 15/- as the rent of the accommodation to be paid by the respondent to the appellant. The appellant sent by registered post a notice which was received by the respondent on 28-8-1958. The relevant contents of the notice were thus :

(2.) The appellant gave one notice and that was both for terminating the tenancy of the respondent and for payment of the arrears. As regards the notice terminating the tenancy we find nothing illegal in it. It did not become illegal merely because it was accompanied by a demand for arrears of rent. A document purporting to have a legal effect may fail to achieve that effect if it lacks something but cannot fail to achieve it just because it contains a superfluous matter, unless the law makes it devoid of the effect on account of its containing the superfluous matter. There is nothing in Sections 106 and 111 (h) of the Transfer of Property Act to indicate that if a notice terminating the tenancy contains another demand it is invalid or ceases to be a notice terminating the tenancy. It has been held by this Court that one notice terminating the tenancy and demanding arrears of rent is not invalid; see Jagat Narain Mehra v. Madan Lal, 1961 All LJ 442 in which Oak and Kailash Prasad, JJ., overruled Ram Krishna Prasad v. Mohd. Yahia, 1960 All LJ 579 : (AIR 1960 All 482) in which a contrary view was taken by Dhavan, J.

(3.) Another defect pointed out in the notice terminating the tenancy was that it terminated the tenancy on the date on which the notice was given and not after thirty days. Under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act the respondent's tenancy was a tenancy from month to month