JAFAR RAZA ZAIDI Vs. IIIRD DISTRICT JUDGE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiff-respondent filed a suit for ejectment of the petitioner from the house in dispute and for recovery of rent and mesne profits etc. The plaint case was that the accommodation was not subject to the provisions of the U.P. Urban Buildings (Regulation of Letting, Rent and Eviction) Act, 1972 (U.P. Act No. 13 of 1972), hereinafter referred to as 'the Act' because it was assessed to Municipal tax on 1.10.1972. It was further alleged that the building was required for the own use of the family of the plaintiff, that the tenancy of the petitioner was, therefore, determined by a notice under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, which was served on the petitioner. The petitioner contested the suit with the allegations that the house in dispute had been actually inspected by the Assessment Inspector on 21.5.1972 who had submitted a report about the completion of the building on 3.7.1972 and consequently the petitioner was entitled to the benefit of Section 39 of the Act. The petitioner also denied that he was a defaulter. The trial court gave the benefit of Section 39 of the Act to the petitioner and held that he was not a defaulter and consequently dismissed the suit. The respondent-landlord filed a revision which was allowed by the IIIrd Addl. District Judge, Aligarh and the suit of the respondent was decreed. It was held by the revisional court, and in my opinion rightly, that the construction of the building must be deemed to have been completed on 3.7.1972, when the Assessment Inspector reported the matter to the Assessment Officer after having inspected the building in dispute on 21.5.1972. The trial court was in error in accepting the date of actual assessment, namely, 1.10.1972, as the date of construction of the building. The finding of the trial court was based on an erroneous interpretation of clause (a) of Explanation I of sub-section (2) of Section 2 of the Act, on the basis that the building completed its ten years on 3.7.1982 whereas the application under Section 39 of the Act was moved on 30.10.1982, the learned Judge held that even on the resumption that the Act applied to the case, the deposit by the petitioner having been made after that one month calculated from 3.10.1982, he was not entitled to benefit of Section 39 of the Act. For these reasons the revisional Court decreed the plaintiff's suit. Aggrieved by the aforesaid decree the petitioner has filed this writ petition.

(2.) SHRI S.S. Bhatnagar, learned counsel for the petitioner, has canvassed only one point before me. He has challenged the validity of clause (a) of Explanation I of sub-section (2) of Section 2 of the Act on the ground that it provides for an artificial date to be taken as the date of completion of construction of the building and is for that reason violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. Some times an argument gains in crisoness by taking examples to illustrates a point. I was urged that effect of the explanation was to give rise to manifestly anomalous positions. Thus, for instance it was urged that two tenements simultaneously constructed and completed would have to bear two different dates of complation of their construction depending upon the fact that in respect of one of them an assessment was made whereas in respect of the other it was not made. Likewise in respect of one of them the completion of construction was reported to the authorities concerned and in the case of the contiguous construction it was not so done. This was bound to result in obvious discrimination, even though the buildings were constructed and completed at more or less the same point of time. The example, no doubt, is attractive but before pressing into service any illustration for the purpose of assailing the 'vires' of a provision of law, care should be taken that we do not travel entirely in the realm of fantasy. An elementary awareness of the realities of life and the probabilities of the situation and the modus operandi of the various institutions of society such as the local bodies etc. is essential for the purpose of testing the validity of a Legislation. Section 2(2) provides :

(3.) THE analogy drawn earlier to high light the discrimination which might result with respect to the contiguous accommodations being treated differently on account of the fortuitious circumstances that one of them had been assessed by the local authority while the other had not been assessed or that one of them had been reported for assessment and the other had not been so reported, is wholly inapt. It is not correct to raise the plea of discrimination by referring to purely hypothetical situations untrammel, led by the bonds of reality. It would be a sorry state of affairs. Indeed, if a Municipal Board or others local authority slept over the matter for ten years or more and did not care to assess a building for purposes of taxation. It is also highly improbable bordering on the limits of a absurdity, that a house completed 15 years ago would never be occupied by any tenant for all this period or that it would never be assessed and that it would persistently escape the vigilant eye of the local assessing authorities. These are circumstances which are wholly imagins and the validity of the provisions of law cannot be tested on these imgainery touchstones. There are statues which govern the procedure of bringing constructed houses under assessment and also for bringing to book those offenders who try to evade such processes of law. Such abnormal or extremely hypothetical cases cannot be made the basis for the purpose of assailing the validity of a law under Article 14 of the Constitution.