KAILASH KUMAR Vs. BANARSI DAS GUPTA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners challenge in this revision the correctness of the order passed by the City Judge at Jammu declining permission to them to adduce certain evidence in a suit instituted against them for ejectment by the respondent.

(2.) THE defendants have been holding certain shop premises as the tenants of one Muni Lal who sold the premises to the plaintiff -respondent. On the strength of this sale deed the plaintiff sued for eviction of the defendants on the ground that he required the shop for his own use. The defendants set up in their written statement that they were not aware of the sale of the property by Muni Lal. They pleaded further that they had constructed a room on the property let out to them and that in case of eviction they had to be paid the value of that room or be permitted to dismantle it.

(3.) THIS legal proposition on which the lower courts order has been founded is assailed by the petitioners -defendants as erroneous. I am inclined to accede to their contention. No doubt, S. 116 of the Evidence Act enacts a rule of estoppel against a tenant during the continuance of the tenancy from denying that his landlord had at the beginning of the tenancy a title to the property leased. But there is nothing in S. 116 which extends this rule of estoppel to a person who claims to be the representative of the landlord by assignment.