MOHAMMAD MATIN Vs. ADDITIONAL DISTRICT JUDGE KANPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. It challenges the order of respondent No. 1 dated 27-4-1973 allowing a revision in a proceeding under Section 3 of the U. P. (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act (Act No. III of 1947), hereinafter referred to as the old Act. By the impugned order the revising authority released the accommodation in dispute in favour of respondent No. 3 the landlady.

(2.) THE tenant is the petitioner and the dispute relates to house No. 98/29, Bekanganj, Kanpur. The accommodation is sufficiently big and was let out to the petitioner in the year 1951. He subsequently started a business in it. In 1962 he purchased a house No. 98/157 in the same locality and shifted in it. Since then he has been using the accommodation in dispute only for purposes of business. The respondent No. 3, the landlady, has a large family and her source of livelihood has been income from zamindari propeity and some rents from houses. Her husband, it is stated, is diabetic and suffers from anginal troubles also. The application for permission was filed on the ground that the family being big, the income was insufficient to maintain it; one of her sons having come of age she wanted to put him in business and start one in the accommodation in dispute. Since the business contemplated was of sale of building materials which involved stocking in sufficient quantity materials like sand, Lime, Surkhi and other such materials, a spacious accommodation was required for the purpose. The house in dispute was the only suitable accommodation available. The application stated that the petitioner owned House No. 98/157, Bekanganj, Kanpur which was very big and where he had shifted his business; and the premises in dispute were not needed by him any longer; besides, the petitioner owned a large track of land at Jajmau having a godown. shed and store which was another alternative accommodation available for his business. The need of the landlady was thus pressing while the tenant had two sufficiently big alternative accommodations available to him for the purposes of his business. It was stated that he had already shifted his business to premises No. 98/157, but even if he had not done so, he could do so either in those premises or in the premises at Jajmau.

(3.) THE Rent Control and Eviction Officer dismissed the application on the findings that the petitioner was carrying on the business of raw hides and skins in the premises in dispute since 1951; that in premises No. 98/157, owned by the petitioner another business was being carried on by a partnership firm of seven partners of which the petitioner was one, besides the petitioner was also living in a portion of it; that the stock of raw hides and skins required sufficient space and could not conveniently be shifted to premises No. 98/157; that Bekanganj was a market area for hides and skins and the petitioner had established a good will, that the accommodation at Jajmau was not suitable for the business of hides and skins that even though the landlady had no other suitable accommodation available to her for the business, the permission praved for could not be granted in the circumstances of the case.