BRAHMA NAND Vs. PARKASH CHAND AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) SHRI Brahma Nand applied under section 13 of the Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act for the eviction of a number of respondents from the premises in question. The said premises are stated to have been taken on rent on 7th May, 1951 for a period of one year per Exhibit P. 2 on a monthly rent of Rs. 5/ -. The rent was to be paid every month, the tenant being Gondi Ram, the predecessor -in -interest of the persons against whom the present eviction proceedings were started. Gondi Ram died, as the order of the learned Rent Controller shows, five years prior to the eviction proceedings: the exact date not being known to the counsel at the bar in this Court. The persons sought to be evicted had apparently paid no rent from March, 1958 to April, 1963. From this, it is inferred that Gondi Ram must have died sometime before March, 1958. The premises were also stated to be in a dangerous condition and unfit for human habitation justifying eviction.

(2.) THIS application was contested and the fact of Gondi Ram having taken the premises on rent was also denied. Indeed, the persons in possession claimed ownership in themselves.

(3.) AGAINST the order or eviction, the matter was taken on appeal to the Appellate Authority, Patiala, by Parkash Chand and others. It may here be mentioned that Parkash Chand, Siri Ram, Pawan Kumar minor, Sukhdev Ram minor and Mohinder Lal alias Surinder Lal minor under the guardianship of Parkash Chand, their real brother, were the soaps of Gondi Ram and Smt. Shanti Devi, was widow of Gondi Ram, who, amongst others, were the appellants. Before the Appellate Authority, it was argued that the Rent Controller was wrong in holding that the relationship of landlord and tenant subsisted between the parties, Gondi Ram, according to the argument, had died after the expiry of the period of tenancy created under the alleged rent deed and the legal representatives of Gondi Ram did not become the tenants of Brahma Nand because statutory tenancy is not heritable. This argument appears to have prevailed with the learned Appellate Authority for the reason that tenancy being for a fixed period, of one year, after the expiry of that period, Gondi Ram became the statutory tenant under Brahma Nand. Gondi Ram, who, according to the common case of the parties before the Appellate Authority, died somewhere near about 1953, was a statutory tenant and, therefore, his rights and liabilities as a statutory tenant could not be inherited by his heirs, as indeed they could not be transferred by him, with the result that possession of the appellants before the Appellate Authority over the premises in dispute was that of trespassers and not of tenants. In support of this conclusion, the Appellate Authority relied on a decision of Mehar Singh, J. in Nihal Chand v. Shiv Narain, (1958) 60 P.L.R. 297. Reference was also made to Ganga Narain v. Balkishan Dass, A.I.R. 1934 P&H. 356 and Niadre v. Nanneh, (1960) 62 P.L.R. 451, in support of this view. The impugned order also contains observations that the learned counsel for the landlord had conceded that Gondi Ram had become a statutory tenant after the expiry of the period of one year for which there was a contractual tenancy, though it was contended on his behalf that the appellants remained tenants by holding over or tenants by sufferance and the relationship of landlord and tenant subsisted between the parties. This submission did not find favour with the Appellate Authority, with the result that the appeal was allowed and the order of eviction set aside.