MOHINDER NATH Vs. SANDHRAN RANI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is the landlord. The respondent is the tenant The petitioner filed a suit for ejectment against the respondent only on the ground of three legal defaults in the payment of rent. The respondent resisted the suit and inter alia pleaded that she had been regularly depositing the rent of the suit house with the Rent Controller, Jammu, because the petitioner had refused to accept the rent offered by her. She denied having committed any default, much less three legal defaults in the payment of rent. From the pleadings of the parties the following issues were framed:

(2.) The trial court found that only one legal default in the payment of the rent had been proved and that three defaults, as alleged by the petitioner and contemplated by Section 11 (i) of the Jammu and Kashmir Houses and Shops Rent Control Act, had not been proved. It accordingly decided issue No. 1 against the petitioner and in favour of the respondent but did not proceed to decide issues Nos. 2 and 3 and opined that the decision on issue No. 1 did not warrant dismissal of the petitioner's suit because it found that the respondent had committed one default in the payment of rent. The trial court, therefore. postponed the consideration of issues Nos. 2 and 3 till deciding whether the suit could be decreed on the ground of a single default in payment of rent in terms of Subsections (1), (2) and (3) of Section 12 of the Act. The petitioner is agrrieved of this order and has come up to this court in a revision petition under Section 115 C. P. C.

(3.) Mr. R. P. Sethi, learned counsel for the petitioner has urged that on the basis of the admitted facts the finding that there had been only one default, and not three defaults, in the payment of rent, is erroneous and that on the basis of the proved facts, the court should have decided issue No. 1, in favour of the petitioner and decreed the suit. It is argued that the trial court failed to exercise the jurisdiction vested in it by law and the disposal of the case in this manner has caused miscarriage of justice. It is further argued that the trial court was in error in regarding the deposit of rent, before the rent controller, as a circumstance absolving the defendant of his liability to ejectment without there being any strict compliance with the provisions of Section 14 of the Act. It is also maintained that even on the finding, as recorded by the trial court, the suit should have been decreed because the tenant had not claimed benefit of Subsections (1), (2) and (3) of Section 12 of the Act.