SALLOMAL Vs. BADRI PRASAD AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS second appeal preferred by the defendant against whom the suit for eviction and recovery of arrears of rent has been decreed raises a question of law on which there are precedential authorities of our High Court which are conflicting.

(2.) IT appears that on 13th November 1962 a document of lease was execu­ted mutually by the parties creating a lease for manufacture of soap for a period of eleven months. The rent under that lease was payable from month to month. The respondent had given one month's notice for determining the lease under Section J 06 of the Transfer of Property Act. The appellant claimed that this notice was invalid as the lease was compulsorily registrable but it was not registered. It was, therefore, an invalid lease. Thirty days notice determining the lease was invalid as it was for manufacturing purpose and requires six month's notice as laid down under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act. The decision of the lower appellate court having gone against the appellant he has preferred this appeal.

(3.) THE respondent's counsel has contended that the term of the lease is only a collateral transaction and under the proviso to Section 49 of the Registration Act it can be looked into. He has placed his reliance on the Lala Fateh v. Mst. Radha Rani and others(1956 A.LJ. 625). In that case it was held that the lease if un­registered was inadmissible in evidence except for collateral purposes, as provided in Sec. 49 of the Registration Act. Gurtu J. went on to observe: "I think that the term of the expired lease which provides that the5 tenant can be ejected upon one month's notice can be looked at because looking at that term in connection with the holding over would be looking at the lease for merely a Collateral purpose; the collateral purpose being to find out whether it is to be a one month's notice or a six months' notice to quit to determine the holding over. What a collateral purpose is cannot be precisely defined. It must vary with the circumstances of each case. Leases which were not registered but were required to be registered and were therefore inadmissible for a purpose other than a collateral one have been looked at in reported cases in order to ascertain the nature of the possession of the tenant, the date from which the tenancy began and for determining the period of tenancy and for finding out what the rent reserved was. Since the courts have treated all these purposes as collateral, I would have been prepared even to go so far as to hold that it would be a collateral purpose to look at a term like the present one in this lease even in a case where the tenant was still holding under the unexpired lease and not merely holding over under Section 116 of the Transfer of Property Act." This view fully supports the case of the res­pondent that the term of the lease can be looked into as it was for a collateral purpose. In Ram Kumar Das v. Jagdish Chandra Deo, Dhabal Das and another(AIR. 1952 S.C. 23), it was observed: