ABDUL GHAFOOR Vs. MUSHIR ALI KHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This second appeal arises out of a suit for possession of an 'ahata' and shop. The plaintiff-respondent Mushir Ali Khan, who is the owner of these premises, had let them out to the defendant-appellant Abdul Ghafoor on a rent of Rs. 200/- per annum, under a registered agreement executed on 2.8.1939, for running a saw-mill. The lease was meant to be for five years only, but the defendant continued to hold over after the expiry of that period. In the year 1962 the plaintiff sought permission from the Rent Control and Eviction Officer for filing a suit for the ejectment of the defendant; and in the course of the revision arising out of those proceedings a compromise was arrived at between the parties in the Court of the Commissioner, according to which the defendant undertook to remove his machines from a certain portion of the land within six months, whereupon he would be allowed to occupy the remaining portion of the land. The Commissioner ordered on the basis of this compromise that if the defendant did not vacate the portion stipulated within the agreed six months, permission to file a suit for his ejectment would be deemed to have been granted after the expiry of that period. The plaintiff filed the present suit in 1963, alleging that the defendant had not complied with the terms of the compromise. Before filing the suit the plaintiff had given only one month's notice for terminating the tenancy; and one of the pleas taken by the defendant was that this notice was invalid, since he was entitled to six months' notice because the accommodation in question had been let out for manufacturing purposes and the lease was from year to year, not from month to month. The learned Munsif of Pilibhit, however, repelled all the pleas of the defendant and decreed the suit for possession on 31.10.1967; and this decision was upheld in appeal by the Second Additional Sessions Judge of Pilibhit on 19.7.1967.

(2.) A number of points have been raised in this second appeal, but after hearing learned counsel for the parties, we find that it will be necessary for us to deal with only one of them, namely the question of whether the tenancy was from year to year, requiring a notice of six months for its termination, or whether it was from month to month, terminable on one month's notice. Regarding the other points that have been raised in the suit, we do not propose to express any opinion.

(3.) The premises were admittedly let out to the defendant for running a saw-mill; and we are fully satisfied that such a lease must be deemed to be for manufacturing purposes. The words 'manufacturing purposes' used in Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, not having been defined in the Act, have obviously to be given their normal dictionary meaning, in accordance with popular usage; and we may usefully adopt the definition approved by Mulla in his Commentary on the Transfer of Property Act (fifth edition, page 664), viz. "the making of articles of trade and commerce by means of machinery". The conversion of logs of wood into planks, beams joists etc. by a saw-mill is clearly covered by these words. An attempt has been made to argue that since the material used (i.e. the wood) is not changed into some other substance by being sawn up, the process of sawing cannot be described as manufacture. This argument, however, will not bear scrutiny, for in that case the husking of rice (held to be a manufacturing process in Zahoor Ahmad Abdul Sattar v. State of U.P., 1965 AIR(All) 326 or the grinding of wheat into flour) similarly held to be manufacture in Behari Lal v. Smt. Chandrawati,1966 AIR(All) 541 would also have to be excluded from the definition since none of these processes involves any change in the material used other than a change in its physical shape by reducing it to smaller pieces or particles. Indeed if the arguments were to be accepted, even the spinning of cotton into yarn would not be a manufacturing process, since the substance mains the same even when it has been spun. Learned counsel for the plaintiff-respondent has drawn our attention to the case of Union of India v. Delhi Cloth and General Mills Co. Ltd., 1963 AIR(SC) 791, in which it was held that the conversion of crude vegetable oil into refined oil did not amount to 'manufacture'; but that was a case about the levy of excise duty, in which entirely different considerations had to be taken into account, and can afford no guidance for the interpretation of the words 'manufacturing purposes' in the context of Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act. A saw-mill undoubtedly makes articles of trade (planks etc.) by means of machinery and is thus engaged in manufacture; and therefore a lease for the purpose of setting up a saw-mill is clearly a lease for manufacturing purposes and must be deemed, by virtue of Section 106, to be a lease from year to year, "terminable..... by six months' notice expiring with the end of a year of the tenancy."