KANTILAL RUPCHAND PATANI Vs. BALKRISHNA DAGADUSHETH SONAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) DURING the pendency of this petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, the original parties have died. For the sake of convenience, however, I will refer to the original parties as the plaintiffs and the defendants.

(2.) THE plaintiffs filed a suit, being Regular Civil Suit No. 48 of 1974, in the Court of the Civil Judge, Junior Division, at Yeola against the defendants for possession of the premises tenanted by the latter on several grounds. One of the grounds was that the defendants were in arrears of rent for a period of more than six months and those arrears were not cleared within one month after the receipt of the notice given by the plaintiffs under Section 12(2) of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, hereinafter referred to as "the Bombay Rent Act". The learned trial Judge, by his judgment and order dated 20th of December, 1978, found that the defendants were guilty of arrears of rent under Section 12(3)(a) of the Bombay Rent Act and, therefore, decreed the suit for possession.

(3.) MR . Karandikar, the learned Advocate appearing in support of the petition, has taken me through the judgments of the two Courts below. He has contended that the Court of first instance had made the correct calculation of the amount due from the defendants and the amount paid by the defendants and had thereafter come to the conclusion that the defendants were guilty of arrears of rent within the meaning of Section 12(3)(a) of the Bombay Rent Act. The discussion about the arrears of rent has been made by the trial Court in paragraph 26 of the its judgment. I have gone through the same. I am not quite sure whether the reasoning contained in the said paragraph is correct. But that apart, I do not see how in exercise of the powers under Article 227 of the Constitution it is possible for me to interfere with the finding of fact recorded by the appeal Court below, which is the final Court of facts. The appeal Court below, after considering the material record, as a final Court of facts ought to do, has come to the conclusion that there was, in fact, over-payment on the part of the tenants to the landlords. This conclusion is stated in paragraph 17 of the judgment as follows :