MAHESH Vs. HARBANS SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition has been filed against the order of the Rent Controller allowing an eviction petition against the present petitioner.

(2.) The respondent had filed the instant petition under Section 13 (B) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (for short the Act of 1949) claiming that he was a Non-Resident Indian and had taken retirement in the year 1998 and wanted to come back to India and required the shop in question to start a business of stationery. The first argument of learned counsel for the petitioner is that being a foreign citizen the respondent would not be covered by the definition of Non-Resident Indian (NRI) as defined under Section 2 (dd) of the Act of 1949. In Krishan Kumar Vs. Kamla Devi passed in CR No.3509-2014, decided on 09.05.2016 this argument has been rejected. The second argument raised by learned counsel for the petitioner is that the respondent had not disclosed in his petition that he had two other shops in his possession. In the first place to my mind the plea that non-disclosure entails dismissal would not be available in the present case. The requirement of mandatory disclosure has been incorporated only in Section 13(3) which deals with the personal requirement of a resident Indian. This requirement is not there while seeking eviction under any other ground or under Section 13 (B) which is a special right conferred upon NRIs. In the circumstances, the plea that non-disclosure entails dismissal can not be taken by a tenant in a proceeding under Section 13 (B). Faced with this learned counsel for the petitioner has argued that even if the plea of non-disclosure can not be raised by the tenant in a petition under Section 13 (B), yet in the present case once the landlord was forced to admit in his cross-examination that he had two more shops in his possession it was a case where the Court should have held that the tenant had displaced the presumption of bonafide requirement. It may be mentioned here that the plea regarding availability of two shops was raised in the application under Section 18 (A) and in the reply thereto the landlord-respondent had averred that one of the shops was being used as a garage by him and the other shop was being used as a store. It is against this backdrop of fact that the following extracts from the judgment of the Supreme Court in Baldev Singh Bajwa Vs. Monish Saini, 2006 AIR(SC) 59 requires significance :-

(3.) A reading of the above shows that the mere fact that a landlord has any other premises in his occupation would not be enough especially like in the present case where the landlord has given an explanation that one of the rooms is being used as a garage and the other as a store.