HARI PRASHAD GUPTA Vs. JITENDER KUMAR KAUSHIK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) What is the true import and scope of the State Government Notification dated June 3, 1959, issued under S. 3 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, is the precise question which calls for determination by this Full Bench. This notification reads as follows :--

(2.) The few skeletal facts which deserves to be noticed to unravel the controversy raised in this petition under Section 15(6) of the Act are as follows : The demised premises consist of two rooms, one constructed by the petitioner-landlord on his own land and the other constructed by him on the land taken on lease from the Municipal Committee, Gurgaon. Both these rooms were rented out to the respondent-tenant at one and the same time and thus one tenancy came into being. As the roof of the room on the municipal land started leaking and required immediate repairs and the repeated efforts of the respondent failed to persuade the petitioner to carry out those repairs, he filed the present application under S. 12 of the Act praying therein that he may be allowed to carry out the necessary repairs at the cost of the landlord. The petitioner while admitting the relationship of landlord and tenant between the parties pleaded the 'bar of jurisdiction' with the Rent Controller on the basis of the above notification. His precise plea was that since the land underneath the room rented out to the respondent belonged to the Municipal Committee, the Rent Controller had no jurisdiction in the matter. As a result of the trial that followed, the Rent Controller upheld this plea and dismissed the application of the respondent-tenant. On an appeal by the latter, the appellate authority (Additional District Judge, Gurgaon) held that though the land underneath the superstructure had been taken on lease by the petitioner from the Municipal Committees and thus belonged to it, yet the superstructure thereon having been raised by the landlord (lessee from the Municipal Committee) and the relationship of land-lord and tenant having been admitted between the parties, the Rent Controller had all the jurisdiction to entertain and decide the present application filed under S. 12 of the Act. As a result of this conclusion, the appellate authority remanded the case back to the Rent Controller for decision afresh on merits. It is this order of the appellate authority dated Sept. 5, 1980, which is now impugned by the landlord- petitioner in this petition.

(3.) When the case was argued before me in Single Bench, I was inclined to allow this petition in view of the Division Bench judgment of this Court in Raghu Nath Jalota v. Romesh Duggal, (1979) 2 Rent LR 457 : (AIR 1980 Punj & Har 188) wherein it has been held that an appellate authority under S. 15, sub-section (3) of the Act has no jurisdiction to remand the whole case to the Rent Controller: but since the learned counsel for the petitioner maintained that the finding of the appellate authority to the effect that the Rent Controller had the jurisdiction to entertain and decide the present application, was untenable, I allowed the matter to be argued in detail.