ON THE DEATH OF TILCKANSA PHUKAN HIS HEIRS AND LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES RAJANI KANTA PHUKAN AND ORS. Vs. LALIT CHANDRA BORBAKUAH AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A short point of law, at times, prompts insights into big social stakes. Inadequacy of expression of legislative intent, apparent, or real, if not remedied by judicial initiative and imagination, often tends to defeat or constrict the purpose of the measure and make impossible the full, complete and adequate achievement of the social objectives underlying it. To this Court, social justice is not a mere demagogic slogan and therefore when such objectives are directly rentable to Constitutional goals, there is a duty on the Court to speak and retrieve the lost ground. For, such duty transcends the narrow limits of litigative process in the case of superior Courts constitutionally obligated to expose and interpret Jaw. However, we propose, to deal with the case in band first on its own merit.

(2.) THIS appeal by the landlords arises out of a suit instituted on 9.3.64 for declaration of title and recovery of possession of a plot of land in Sibsagar town. The Defendant No. 1, the tenant, resisted ejectment and claimed protection of the Assam Non-Agricultural Urban Areas Tenancy Act, 1955 (hereinafter "Assam Act" or "the Act ") as he had thereon his dwelling house which was a permanent structure as defined under the Act. The trial Court accepted the plea and dismissed the suit on 17 -8 -70. A brief resume of the respective cases of the parties, as revealed by the pleadings, is given below.

(3.) IN his written statement the Defendant No. I (tenant) did not deny the title of the Plaintiffs to the suit land but in para 4 he categorically denied that the house standing thereon was the joint property of the Plaintiffs. He asserted that the house belonged to him and he was the owner of the house. It was his case that in 1947 he got vacant possession of the suit land on lease, from Tilakanta Plaintiff No. 1 and in 1949 ho constructed permanent dwelling house thereon after taking permission from the Sibsagar Municipal Board through his wife Smti Prema Rani Barbaruah. He has also referred to certain municipal records and relied on Plaintiff document No. 4 In support of his cane that the house on the suit land belonged to him and that only the land belonged to the Plaintiffs. He has stated that before he took the land on lease in 1947 there was a house thereon in a dilapidated condition which had fallen down and was removed from the said land by the owner before vacant possession thereof was given to him He has also stated that he had exercised the option of renewal as per lease (Plaintiffs document No. 4 and for that purpose he had served notice on two of the executants, Lok Nath Phukan, on 23.9.60 and on Nila Kanta Phukan, on 16.9.70. it is asserted that Tila Kanta was accepting the annual rent for the land till 1963 and that from the beginning of the lease he had been paying rent for the land in advance. The Defendant claimed that he was protected from eviction under the Assam Act because he bad constructed his permanent dwelling house on the suit land in 1949 after incurring an expenditure of more than Rs. 30,000/ -. He was entitled under the law to make extension thereto and the Chairman of Sibsagar Municipal Board had in fact granted him permission for the same on 22.11.63.