MILKHA SINGH AND ORS. Vs. MAHARAJ KISHAN KESAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AN application for eviction was made by the landlords, Applicants in this revision application, against the tenant, Respondent, on various grounds and the Rent Controller allowed the application ordering eviction of the tenant, on the ground of the tenant having been guilty of such acts and conduct six are a nuisance to the occupiers of buildings in the neighbourhood, within the meaning and scope of Section 13(2)(iv) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (East Punjab Act 3 of 1949).

(2.) THE tenant filed an appeal to the Appellate Authority from the order of eviction made against him by the Rent Controller. At the time of the hearing of the appeal before the Appellate Authority, it was urged on behalf of the tenant that by that time the nuisance had been abated and hence the ground of eviction under Section 13(2)(iv) of the Act had ceased to exist. It was contended, consistent with the decision in Surinder Kumar v. Gian Chand, 1958 S.C.A. 412, that as the appeal before the Appellate Authority was for rehearing of the eviction application by the landlords and as by that time the ground of eviction had ceased, so that application must be dismissed. Their Lordships held in that case that "the hearing of an Appeal is under the procedural law of the country in the nature of rehearing and therefore, in moulding the relief to be granted in appeal an Appellate court is entitled to take into account even facts and events which have come into existence since the decree appealed from was passed. In determining what justice does require, the court is bound to consider any change, either in fact or in law, which has supervened since the judgment was entered." The Appellate Authority on the basis of such argument proceeded, on December 29, 1965, to make an order directing the Rent Controller to make further enquiry whether since the date of order of eviction made by him the nuisance had been abated and whether during the pendency of the appeal there have again been, on the part of the tenant, 'such acts and conduct as are a nuisance to the occupiers of buildings in the neighbourhood'. The Appellate Authority has called a report of the Rent Controller in that respect. It is against that order of the Appellate Authority that the landlords have come in revision to this Court.

(3.) ONE ground had already been given that if the legislature intended to take away an already existing ground of eviction, then it would have made a similar exception as in the case of the ground of non -payment of arrears of rent. There is, however, another aspect of the matter and it becomes rather more apparent and prominent in this very ease. The argument before the Appellate Authority not only raised the question of the abatement of the nuisance after the date of the order of the Rent Controller, but also with regard to acts and conduct of the tenant in creating a further and new nuisance after the date of the order of the Rent Controller. Ordinarily any such fresh act or conduct of the tenant would give a cause for a fresh application for eviction to the landlord, but if the argument on the side of the tenant was accepted that facts and events happening after the order of the Rent Controller and during the pendency of appeal against that order must be taken into consideration in moulding the relief to be granted in the landlord's application, there seems to be no ground for not taking into consideration new acts and conduct of the tenant which justifies his eviction, while taking into consideration the fact of the ground having become non -existent after the date of the order of the Rent Controller. Both parties will have to be treated in the same manner and subject to the same principle. But, in my opinion, the dictum in Surinder Kumar's case does not apply to a case like the present because of the terms of the statute under which the parties are litigating and the anomaly like the above, therefore, cannot possibly arise.