SHANTISWAROOP KRISHNALAL MAHESH Vs. LAXMANRAO VENKATRAO KAPSE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition seeks to challenge an order passed by the Court of Small Cause at Bombay in an ejectment application, being Application No. 357/E on 1973, as being without jurisdiction. The impugned order has been passed on 12th July, 1979, though the application had been filed in the year 1973. The gap between the date when the application was filed and the date of the order is only partly explained by the fact of the usual delay in the disposal of cases. There were other proceedings between the parties, whom I will now shortly proceed to describe, and this fact is also part of the cause of the delay in the passing of the final order.

(2.) The petitioner is occupying a flat, being Flat No. 10-A in Maitri Vijaya Co-operative Housing Society at Chembur, a suburb of Bombay. That flat is owned by the two respondents in this petition. On 15th June, 1971, there was what has been characterised as a leave and licence agreement between the petitioner and the respondents under which the petitioner was permitted to occupy the flat, hereinafter referred to as the suit premises. The rent agreed to be paid by the petitioner was Rs. 500/- per month. It has been mentioned that apart from the suit premises, the petitioner was entitled to use a garage. The leave and licence agreement was renewed subsequently on 15th of May, 1972 for a further period of eleven months. Subsequently the respondents, by a notice dated 2nd July, 1973, terminated the licence of the petitioner and on 9th of July, 1973 filed an ejectment application under section 41 of the Presidency Small Cause Courts Act, 1882 in its application to the State of Maharashtra. The final order that is passed in this applications the subject matter of challenge in this petition. Before considering that challenge, I must briefly narrate certain other parallel proceedings which took place between the parties.

(3.) On 10th of July, 1973, the petitioner filed a declaratory suit under section 28 of the Bombay Rents Hotel and Lodging House Rates (Control) Act, hereinafter referred to as the Bombay Rent Act, for a declaration that he is a protected licensee and thus a tenant under section 15-A of the Bombay Rent Act. This suit was numbered as Declaratory Suit No. 4328 of 1973. The petitioner also on the same day filed an application, being R.A.N. Application No. 739/SE of 1973, for fixation of the standard rent of the suit premises. All these three cases, namely the two applications and one suit, were tried together by the Court of Small Cause and were disposed of on 18th of October, 1978. The declaratory suit filed by the petitioner was dismissed; the preliminary issue regarding the tenancy of the petitioner raised on his contention in the ejectment application was answered in the negative; the standard rent application also came to be dismissed. Shortly, the petitioner failed in the three proceedings.