Ram Gopal and Others vs Om Parkash and Others

Mahajan, J.—This is a petition for revision u/s 15(5) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, and is directed against the order of the District Judge, as appellate authority reversing on appeal the decision of the Rent Controller rejecting the landlord''s application for eviction of the tenant.

The premises in dispute are a shop, now divided into three parts, in which the business of a halwai, cloth merchant and general merchant is being carried on at the present moment. These premises belonged to Prabhu Dayal and were rented out by him to Chetan Ram. According to Chetan Ram he took the premises on lease in 1940 and it is stated by him that at the time when he took them on lease they were already divided into three parts. He further went on to say that initially he carried on the business in these premises of a halwai, cloth merchant and a general merchant along with his sons and later on in partnership with some strangers. The only rent note available and which has not been produced is of the year 1956. That rent note was not produced because in an earlier case, when the parties came up in revision to this Court, they agreed that the shop in dispute was taken by Chetan Ram for the purpose of running the business of a halwai. It is not Chetan Ram''s case that the premises were sub-let or that the sub-tenants paid rent of the premises direct to the landlord ; on the contrary, he has stated that the rent was collected by him from the occupants and thereafter paid to the landlord. Therefore, the relationship of landlord and tenant was only as between him and the landlord. There is no evidence on the record that the landlord ever recognised the sub-tenants.

The eviction was sought on a number of grounds, but the principal grounds are ;-

non-payment of rent;

sub-letting ; and

perversion of user.

Oh all these grounds the Rent Controller found in favour of the tenants with the result that the landlord''s petition for eviction of the tenants was dismissed.

On appeal, the appellate authority has taken a totally divergent view on all these three matters and has found that the tenant was in arrears of rent and the arrears were not validly tendered at the first hearing, that there has been subletting and that the premises have been used for a purpose other than the one for which they were taken on lease. All these three matters have been contested by the learned Counsel for the Petitioner in the present petition for revision.

It is not necessary to determine all the three matters, for in my view the petition stands concluded on the question that the arrears of rent were not validly tendered at the first hearing. It would, therefore, be necessary to set out the facts which have a pertinent bearing on this question.

The petition for eviction was filed on the 1st October, 1958. Notice of this petition was issued to the tenant for the 13th October 1958. On the 9th October, 1958, Chetan Ram tenant, Ram Bhagat and Siri Ram, the divided sons of Chetan Ram, and Dhani Ram a stranger, made an application to the Rent Controller that they were prepared to tender the arrears of rent and for that purpose it should be made known as to what the arrears of rent were. Notice of this application was given to the landlord and on the 11th October, 1958, the landlord disclosed that the amount of arrears of rent due was Rs. 295/-. On this amount interest and costs were calculated and the total amount which had to be deposited on the first hearing came to Rs. 350/8/-. This amount was deposited by Chetan Ram, the tenant, his son Ram Bhagat, and Banarsi Das and Dhani Ram strangers. The landlord refused to accept this amount on the ground that the tenant was Chetan Ram alone and as the amount was being tendered by persons other than Chetan Ram as well, there was no proper tender and he was not prepared to accept the amount. On this, the Court directed that the amount be deposited in Court and the same was deposited on that day in Court. On these facts, the learned District Judge as appellate authority has taken the view that there was no proper and valid tender and for this he has relied, upon a decision of this Court in Ram Nath v. Girdhari Lal (1959) 61 P. L. R. 77. The same view is to be found enunciated in a decision by Khosla J. (as he then was) in Smt. Naurati v. Hans Raj C. R. No. 199 of 1937 (decided on 10th March, 1958), and also in another decision of this Court in Ram Nath v. Firm Badri Dass-Radhelal A. I. R. 1951 P&H 435. Mr. Mital learned Counsel for the Petitioners, however, tries to distinguish these authorities on the ground that in all these cases the tender was made by persons other than the tenant, where as in the present case one of the tenderer is the tenant himself and the mere fact that he has joined other persons, who are strangers with him would make all the difference. The tender must be deemed to be by the tenant-and his associates should be ignored. I am however, unable to agree with this contention. It is not a case where other persons were making the payment on behalf of the tenant. The tenant along with the other three made the payment on their own account and that is absolutely clear from the application made to the Court, which has already been referred to above, and I am, therefore, of the view that the principle enunciated in all these decisions fully covers the present case. I would, therefore, hold in agreement with the appellate authority that there was in law no valid tender of the arrears of rent at the first hearing, and that being so, there was no alter- native but to allow the petition for eviction of the tenant.

For the reasons given above, this petition fails and is dismissed with costs.

I, however, allow three months'' time to the tenant to vacate the premises.