DHARAMPAL Vs. HARJIT SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE above two petitions are taken up and disposed of by common order. The properties in question are adjacent shops in the hands of two distinct tenants who were alleged to be the tenants under its original landlord-Harbans Kaur. The Rent Controller and the Appellate Court ordered eviction upholding the claim of the petitioners for the personal requirement.

(2.) THE argument at the threshold was the issue regarding the existence or otherwise of the jural relationship of landlord and the tenant, between the parties. The case went on an admitted premise that after Harbans Kaur's death, property had devolved exclusively on her husband Tara Singh and that Tara Singh was receiving rent till the date of filing of the respective petitions by his sons born through his second wife-Kulwant Kaur. The receipt of rent was explained by Tara Singh himself offering evidence on behalf of the landlords that the rent was being received only on behalf of his sons. His attempt was to show that on an affidavit given before the Revenue Authorities the assessment of tax to the property had been transferred in favour of his sons born through his second wife. Learned Senior Counsel for the revision petitioners contended that the petition itself was an attempt through a crafty machination to get over the legal requirement under Section 13(3)(a) that the landlord suing for his occupation shall not a person occupying another building in the urban area concerned and that he shall not have vacated any such building without sufficient cause. The contention on behalf of the tenants was that the landlord Tara Singh had owned several other buildings and knowing that the interdict of Section 13(3) would operate, he had filed the petition through the sons placing evidence of the mutation entries as affording them a status as landlords.

(3.) A matter so fundamental that would be for the Court to decide, namely, of the existence of relationship of landlord and tenant had been lost sight of both the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority. The eviction ordered on the basis of the requirement of the sons filing the cases in their own right was clearly untenable if the father could not have maintained the petition for the obstacles of his ownership and occupation of several other buildings. The order of eviction passed by the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority, therefore, suffer from the vice of non-consideration of the essential proof of existing jural relationship before the landlord could have approached the Rent Controller under the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949.