RAM CHAND Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Shri Ram Chand, who has been cultivating the land in dispute as, a tenant of respondent Nos. 4 and 5 for the last 30-40 years, has filed this writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India to call in question the orders of the Revenue Authorities, respondent Nos. 1 to 3, directing, on the landlords' application under Section 14-A of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953, (hereinafter briefly referred to as 'the Act'), that the petitioner should put his landlords in possession and vacate the land as he had become liable to eviction under Section 9(1)(ii) of the Act on the ground of his having failed to pay rent regularly without any sufficient cause.

(2.) Even the averments in the petition may show that the petitioner had been very irregular in paying rent for seven or eight years preceding the passing of the impugned orders. It is mentioned in paragraph 3 of the writ petition that rent for the years 1960-61, 1961-62 and 1962-63 had been allowed to fall in arrears and the reason given is that the landlords were minors and their guardians had refused to accept the rent. There was nothing to prevent the tenant from depositing the rent in the Court regularly after the end of each agricultural year. The landlords had to file an ejectment application in 1963 for the recovery of these arrears. Rent for the next two years, that is 1963-64 and 1964-65, had again accumulated and was paid on 29.9.1965. The dispute about the correction of entries in the khasra girdawaris should not have prevented a deposit of these arrears. In spite of the wrong entries, the petitioner had been cultivating the land as a tenant and his liability to pay rent for these years was admittedly there. Regular deposits of the rent in Court were in fact likely to support the petitioner in his dispute with the landlords with regard to the correction of the khasra girdawari entries. Rent for the next two years had also been allowed to accumulate and had been deposited in the Court after the landlords had filed an ejectment application. Under the circumstances, it cannot be said that the petitioner had been paying the rents regularly or that the defaults were committed for any sufficient cause. The Hon'ble Judges of the Supreme Court were pleased to observe in Kapur Chand v. B.S. Grewal, Financial Commissioner, Punjab and others, 1965 PunLJ 91, that where a tenant did not pay the rent regularly and the landlord had to file a suit for the recovery of the arrears through Court, that would establish the very kind of conduct which was contemplated by Section 9(1)(ii) and that this conduct would furnish the landlord with a valid ground for the eviction of the tenant under Section 14-A(i) of the Act. The petitioner can take credit in the present case, not for the regularity in payments but for the regularity with which he has been committing defaults and falling in arrears with the payments of rent. An appreciable degree of contumacy justifying his eviction under Section 9(1)(ii) of the Act may appear to have been established in the present case during the course of about seven or eight years preceding the passing of the impugned orders.

(3.) I see no grounds for interference and dismiss the petition with costs. Petition dismissed.