AMAR SINGH Vs. SHIV RAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS petition for revision, though avowedly admitted to a Division Bench to settle the question whether Order 41, rule 27, Civil Procedure Code, was applicable to proceedings before the Appellate Authorities under the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, or has lost all vigor on that front due to the giving in of the learned counsel for the petitioner. The dispute thus rests merely on merits. The facts are these :-

(2.) THE petitioner herein is the landlord. He owns a shop at Barnala. He filed an application for eviction arraying therein Shiv Ram as his tenant and Messrs Brij Bhushan Krishan Lal, a firm, as the sub-tenant under Shiv Ram. He pleaded that the tenant had sublet the shop in dispute to the sub-tenant without his permission. The allegation was disputed and it was countered that Shiv Ram was a partner of the aforesaid firm and as such the question of subletting did not arise. The sole issue on the question being about the sub-tenancy was decided in favour of the landlord petitioner by the Rent Controller on drawing an adverse inference against the tenant-tenants on the ground that they had not produced the copy of the partnership deed dated 9.4.1973 and had also not produced the statement of their accounts of that period regarding profit and loss and capital of the firm. Undisputably, a copy of the partnership deed executed in 1974 was introduced in evidence as also copy of the account of that year. But the Rent Controller thought it fit to draw an adverse inference against the tenants as said before.

(3.) THE learned counsel for the petitioner maintained that when the tenants were negligent in producing the documentary material which they intended now to produce, they should not have been allowed to fill in the lacuna left in the case. Furthermore, it was contended that the Appellate Authority should have in the first instances proceeded to decide the appeal on the material already available on the record and if for any reason it was unable to decide the matter, then alone could it ask for additional evidence.