CHAMAN LAL Vs. KAKHA RAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) CHAMAN Lal petitioner in this Court applied to the Rent Controller under section 4 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act No. III of 1949 for fixing fair rent. According to his allegations Rakha Ram respondent was charging him Rs. 130/ - per month whereas the fair rent of the shop in question could not, according to law, exceed Rs. 10/ - or Rs. 15/ - per month. The application was contested by the landlord and on the pleadings of the parties the folio wing issue was settled :

(2.) ON revision before me the learned counsel for the tenant -petitioner has drawn my attention to Ladha Ram etc. v. Khushi Ram, (1955) 57 P.L.R. 188, where Bishan Narain J. observed that the object of Rent Control Acts, generally speaking, is inter alia to restrict increase in rents and also to restrict the landlords' rights to eject tenants, thereby preventing the landlords from charging excessive rents and forcing tenants to pay increased rents by threat of ejectment. On the grounds of general public policy and expediency, therefore, the Courts must give full effect to these statutory provisions and a party cannot be allowed to circumvent them by private arrangements. The rent in excess of standard rent is, according to this authority, declared by the statute irrecoverable from the tenants notwithstanding any contract to the contrary between the landlord and the tenant. The scheme of the East Punjab Rent Act was, according to this decision, considered to prevent the landlord or the tenant from coming to any agreement or doing anything which would increase the fair rent of the premises, for, the statute declares such an increase not only illegal but also renders the landlord liable to imprisonment if he tries to enforce such an agreement. In the course of the judgment, another decision by D. Falshaw J. (as he then was) in Maharaj Jagat Bahadur Singh v. Shri Badri Parshad, (1954) 66 P.L.R. 549, was noticed as an authority in support of the view mentioned above. In the ultimate conclusion the learned Single Judge then observed that "fair and standard rent of premises cannot possibly be fixed by agreement between the particular parties before the Controller nor can a dismissal of an application in default or its disposal without enquiry fix fair or standard rent for the premises for all times."

(3.) IT is hardly open to serious doubt, and there is ample support available in binding precedents for the view, that a decree or an order passed by a Court in consequence of a compromise is a mere record of the will of the parties and it cannot be regarded to acquire any greater sanctity than a compromise itself on the mere ground that it is adopted by the Judge or that the command of the Judge is added to it. In such cases the Judge is not called upon to consider the fairness of the compromise with the result that in the absence of judicial determination of: the propriety, validity or legality of the decree or order, they are liable to the same attack and suffer from the same infirmities which the compromise is open or subject to. It is undoubtedly true that a judgment by consent or default is as effective an estoppel between the parties as a judgment in which the Court exercises its judicial mind on the merits of the contested case. The question, however is; Can an order of a Rent Controller accepting the compromise not by judicially determining its legality and propriety operate as res judicata in subsequent proceedings, when the matter relates to fixation of fair rent under the E.P. Rent Restriction Act ?