Raj Kumar vs Mangu Ram

Falshaw, C.J.—This is a revision petition by a landlord against the order of the Appellate Authority setting aside an order of ejectment of the tenant passed by the Kent Controller.

The ground of non-payment of arrears of rent was met by the prompt deposit by the tenant of the arrears plus costs and interest and the only surviving ground is that in Section 13(2)(iv) "that the tenant has been guilty of such acts and conduct as are a nuisance to the occupiers of buildings in the neighbourhood". The premises in suit consist of a shop on the ground floor of a building in the upper portion of which the father of the landlord resides. The father, Ram Partap, was in fact the landlord at one time, but at some stage before the petition was filed in April 1960 he had transferred the ownership of the premises in dispute to his son Raj Kumar who filed the petition as landlord. The conduct of the tenant which has been held by the learned Rent Controller to amount to a nuisance justifying an order for ejectment was something which happened on the 13 h of February 1960 when a disturbance took place between the tenant and the father of the landlord over the fixing of a separate electric meter in the premises occupied by the tenant. This disturbance led to intervention by a police officer A. S. I. Mohan Lal who arrested both of them and instituted proceedings against them u/s 107 Criminal Procedure Code. There were also cross-complaints by the parties. It may he mentioned that both parties were discharged by the order of the Additional District Magistrate dated the 9th of June 1960 on the ground that since the electric connection had now been instaled in the leased permises there was no particular likelihood of any further breach of the peace.

In a rather one-sided judgment, in which the faults of the landlord and his father are minimised o(sic) omitted altogether and the alleged misconduct of the tenant stressed. the learned Rent Controller came to the conclusion that the tenant''s conduct amounted to a nuisance within the meaning of Section 13(2)(iv) of the Act and he relied on the decision of J. L. Kapur J. in Ram Chander v. Kidar Nath (1954) 56 P. L. R. 18.

In the tenant''s appeal the learned Appellate Authority has found on considering the evidence and circumstances exhaustively that although the conduct of the tenant may not have been altogether blameless, he was not primarily responsible for the trouble, which had resulted from the persistent effors of he landlord and his father who. as I have said, was also the landlord until a year or two before the proceedings started, to get him out of the premises by fair means or foul. It is pointed out that they persistently refused to receive the rent when it was tendered even by money order in 1958 with the result that deposi(sic)s on this account had to be made by the tenant in the Treasury, but when such deposits fell in arrears for a few months the present proceedings were promptly instituted for ejectment on the ground of non-payment of arrears of rent. The tenant had been occupying the premises for 8 or 9 years and after the ownership had been transferred from the father to the son a demand was made for an increase of the rent from Rs. 52/- to Rs. 55/- p. m. and when the tenant refused to pay this increase the landlord disconnected the electric connection. The tenant thus had perforce to apply to the Court of the Rent Controller for its restoration, and in a compromise dated the 6th of May 1959 it was agreed that a sub-meter should be installed in the leased premises while at the same time the rent was to be increased to Rs. 60/-. However, when the tenant applied to the Electric Supply Company for the installation of the sub-meter he was met with the objection from the company that the sub-meter could not be installed because the holder of the main connection bad objected, this of course being Ram Partap who, no longer being the landlord, was not strictly bound by the agreement entered into by the parties before the Rent Controller. Being thwarted in this manner the tenant then applied for a separate connection of his own and the disturbance took place in which it is alleged brick-bats were thrown and the tenant at any rate received minor injuries, on the occasion when the workmen of the Electric Supply Company came to instal the new connection. On these facts the learned Appellate Authority held that the landlord was not entitled to have the tenant ejected.

I may first refer to the decision relied on by the learned Rent Controller, and also cited before the learned Appellate Authority and distinguished by him on the facts of the case. It seems that in that case at the time when the ejectment proceedings were taken both the landlord and the tenant were on security u/s 107 Code of Criminal Procedure and in deciding the matter against the tenant the learned Judge observed that it was not the intention of the Act to allow the landlord to be subject to security proceedings u/s 167 Code of Criminal Procedure nor was it meant to protect tenants who do not behave properly and so where the relations between the landlord and the tenant were so strained that both of them were bound u/s 107 Code of Criminal Procedure the landlord should be allowed to take possession of the building if he applied for the ejectment of the tenant.

That case was decided on its own facts, and apart from anything else I am doubtful whether the mere existence of ill feelings between a landlord and his tenant can justify ejectment u/s 13(2)(iv) which reads ''that the tenant has been guilty of such acts and conduct as are a nuisance to the occupiers of buildings in the neighbourhood''. This appears to contemplate the sort of continuous or frequent nuisance committed by tenant which interferes with the convenience or comfort of other persons living in the neighbouring buildings. I do not consider that a single disturbance between a landlord and his tenant if(sic) do not in this case draw any distinction between the landlord and his father) at all furnishes a ground under this Sub-section. In a previous case in which there was trouble between the landlord and the tenant, Kundan Lal v. Amar Nath 1962 C. L. J. (P.) 142, I expressed the view that the expression ''such acts and conduct as are nuisance to the occupiers of buildings in the neighbourhood''must be held to mean that the plural was deliberately used since it would have been quite easy to use the words "any occupier of any building in the neighbourhood" and therefore that conduct which amounts to a nuisance in the eyes of the landlord alone'' even if he happens to occupy premises in the neighbourhood or even in the same building as the based premises, is not sufficient to justify ejectment u/s 13(2)(iv) of the Act.

In the present case I would go further and say that even if strained relations between the landlord and tenant were covered by this ground for ejectment I should be very reluctant indeed to order the ejectment of a tenant where clearly the trouble was created by the efforts of the landlord to make it immpossible for the tenant to continue in peaceful enjoyment of the premises as appears to be the state of affairs in the present case. If this were to be the case all that any landlord would have to do in order to get rid of a tenant would be to provoke a quance with the tenant. The result is that I dismiss the revision petition with costs. Counsel''s fee Rs. 50/-.