SEETARAM Vs. RAMABAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution, by which the petitioners, who are landlords seek to get quashed an order of the Additional Deputy commissioner, Sagar, invested with appellate powers, made on 26-11-1956.

(2.) THE petitioners own a house, which has been given on tenancy to the first respondent Shrimati Rambai and for which she is paying Rs. 5/- per month as rent. The landlords applied to the Rent Controller for permission to serve a notice terminating the lease, on the first respondent, on three grounds, viz. , (a) that she was a habitual defaulter in paying rent, (b) that the premises were old and dilapidated and needed repair and re-construction, and (c) that the tenant had sublet the house to other persons without the petitioner's written permission to do so.

(3.) THE Rent Controller did not accept the first two contentions but granted permission on the third ground. He found that the tenant had inducted into the house five persons, of whom at least three were living there at the time of the application for permission to serve the quit notice, and that those persons were sub-tenants, inducted without the permission of the landlord. From this decision the tenant alone appealed. In appeal the landlords sought permission to urge that the order was justified on the two other grounds on which permission had been refused to him. But the Additional Deputy Commissioner held that the landlords could not urge those grounds as they had not preferred an appeal against the order of the Rent controller. On the third ground the learned Additional Deputy Commissioner held that there was no evidence to prove that the persons who were living in the house were sub-tenants inducted without the permission of the landlord and that therefore the application as a whole was liable to be dismissed. The learned additional Deputy Commissioner accordingly reversed the order of the Rent controller and dismissed the application.