SITA J. SIPPY Vs. ARUN BHATIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two petitions arise out of proceedings instituted by the landlady. who is the petitioner in Writ Petition No. 2915 of 1983, under the provisions of the Bombay Rents. Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, hereinafter referred to as the "Bombay Rent Act". The premises in dispute are a flat bearing No. 81 in a building owned by Mount Blanc Co-operative Housing Society The name of the building is Mount Blanc. The said premises, hereinafter referred to as the "suit premises", consist of two bedrooms, a drawing room and a kitchen. The building is situated on Napeansea Road which has been described by the appeal Court below as a posh locality. The suit premises are owned, as any other apartment in a Co-operative society, by the plaintiff. She, under an agreement dated 11th of Nov. 1969, inducted the respondent in this petition, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, as a licensee of the suit premises. As is well known, by the amendment of the Bombay Rent Act which came into force on 1st of Feb. 1973, licensees whose licences were subsisting on that date were regarded as protected licensees. In effect they got all the protection that is available to a tenant under the provisions of the Bombay Rent Act. The defendant, therefore, became such a protected tenant and the petitioner, hereinafter referred to as the "plaintiff", herself has treated the defendant as a protected tenant.

(2.) The plaintiff issued a notice on 20th of June 1977 to the defendant terminating his tenancy. In that notice she mentioned that her daughters who were being educated at Jamshedpur had come down to Bombay for higher studies and it was necessary for her to occupy the suit premises. The defendant gave a reply on 30th of June 1977 expressing his inability to vacate the suit premises. Sometime in Oct. 1977 the plaintiff sent another letter to the defendant informing the latter that her husband, who was carrying on business at that time at ,Jamshedpur, was intending to shift to Bombay for the purpose of his business and, therefore, the urgency of the requirement of the plaintiff in respect of the suit premises. Since the requisition made by the plaintiff upon the defendant was not complied with, the plaintiff filed a suit, being R.A.F. Suit No. 1197/6817 of 1977, in the Court of Small Causes at Bombay on 1st of Dec. 1977.

(3.) It was the plaintiff's case that her husband, who was working with a Company known as Bellis and Morcom Limited at Calcutta, had given up that employment in 1972 and had subsequently started his own independent business at Jamshedpur. However, for reasons which she has mentioned in the plaint it had become necessary for the plaintiff's husband to take residence in Bombay and in particular in the suit premises which were the only premises they can legitimately occupy. She had also mentioned in the plaint, a case which she has made out at the earliest in her notice dated 20th of June 1917, that her eldest daughter Savita had taken up an employment in Bombay and that her other two daughters were prosecuting their studies in college in Bombay. It is on account of the need of her husband and daughters that the suit premises were reasonably and bona fide required by the plaintiff. She had admitted in the plaint itself that she had taken up temporary accommodation in which she was finding it difficult to continue.