LALA MANOHAR LAL DIED AND AFTER HIM HIS WIDOW SHARIMATI PREMWATI JAIN AND ANR. Vs. LALA BIMAL KUMAR AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a first appeal against the decree of the court below decreeing the Plaintiffs' suit for arrears of rent and for the ejectment of the Defendants. Manohar Lal, Defendant No. 1, appealed against the decree. He died during the pendency of the appeal and his widow and his son were substituted in his place. Defendant No. 2 also got himself transposed as an Appellant from the array of Respondents. None appeared for Defendant No. 2 at the time of the hearing of the appeal and therefore his appeal is dismissed in default with costs.

(2.) THE facts of the case, in brief, are that Defendant No. 1 was in occupation of the western shop and the eastern shop of house No. 76/3 Helsey Road, Kanpur, and also of a godown No. 46/75 in Qooli Bazar, Kanpur. The Plaintiffs' case was that Defendant No. 1 took the western shop and the godown on rent in October, 1941 at Rs. 200 a month and also agreed to pay electric charges for the consumption of electricity in the entire premises of No. 76/3. The portion of the premises other than the shops consisted of a faw rooms on the ground floor and rooms on the first and second floors. It was also alleged that the Defendant took the eastern shop of house No. 76/3 at a rental of Rs. 100 per month. Defendant No. 2 was also in occupation of the eastern shop as sub -tenant of Defendant No. 1 according to the Defendant No. 1 and as a partnership firm of which Defendant No. 1 was also a partner according to the Plaintiffs' allegation.

(3.) IT was alleged by the Defendant that after the partition of the joint family consisting of Manohar Lal and Rishab Kumar in 1938 the joint family business continued as a partnership business that the partnership also was dissolved when Rishab Kumar died in August, 1941 and that the actual division of the partnership assets, etc., took place on the 19th of October, 1941. It is alleged that since the partnership came into existence the rent of the two shops and the ground floor of the house was Rs. 250 a month till such time that Manohar Lal's family occupied one of the floors of the house and that after his family left residing there the rent due from the firm to Rishab Kumar for the ground floor of house No. 76/3 was reduced to Rs. 125. It was further alleged that when Defendant No. 1 vacated rooms on the ground floor in favour of the Plaintiffs as they were required by them, the rent of the two shops alone was to be Rs. 75 a month.