(1.) THE tenant who was successful in resisting the claim for ejectment before the Rent Controller suffered a reversal of the decision at the Appellate Authority. The Appellate Authority upheld the contention of the landlord that there had been a subletting of the premises by the first respondent to respondent Nos. 2 to 4.
(2.) LEARNED counsel for the tenant adverted to the decision of the Appellate Authority to point out to the errors in reasons on the following grounds :-
(3.) IN the present case, the contention of the tenants to explain their possession has come under the circumstance that admittedly the property had been inducted to the possession of the first respondent. While the respondent No. 2 to 4 contended that initially the tenancy itself had been made to the first respondent in his capacity as a partner of the firm, their attempt was to show that their own association with the first respondent was not as sub- tenants but as partners and consequently they could not be attributed to the status of sub-tenants. Learned counsel for the respondentlandlord would immediately respond to this attempt of respondent Nos. 2 to 4 by pointing out that if the original tenancy is to an individual and he took other persons as partners so long as the original tenant who was individual continued in the partnership, the landlord might not have remedy but the moment the individual withdrew himself from partnership and ceased to occupy the premises and allowed the other persons who are inducted as partners to continue in business, the possession of the other partners would partake the character of the sub-tenants. To this line of reasoning, the learned counsel for the respondent before this Court cited the decisions of this Court in Santosh Rani and others v. Nand Lal and others 2000(1) RCR(Rent) 376, Tilak Raj Anand v. Surinder Kumar 2005(1) RCR(Rent) 505.