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Judgment
S.R. Das Gupta, J.—The only question raised in. this appeal is whether or not the rights of a statutory tenant can be transferred.
The Defendant No. 1 is the Appellant before us. The suit out of which this appeal arises was a suit for declaration of title and for possession and for other reliefs. The Plaintiff is the auction-purchaser. The Plaintiff purchased the interest of one Jugal in a certain jama. The date of that purchase is April 17, 1943. It appears that prior to that date in September, 1939, the landlord had obtained a decree for ejectment against Jugal. The execution of that decree was stayed under the provisions of Non-agricultural Tenancy Act (1) but the result of that decree was that Jugal remained in the premises as a statutory tenant. The question, therefore, is what interest, if any, did the Plaintiff purchase in the land in question in the auction sale. In other words, could the right of Jugal which was the right of a statutory tenant be transferred and did the Plaintiff purchase anything which would entitle him to claim possession of the premises against the Defendant?
Mr. Banerjee appearing in support of this appeal cited before us a passage from Megarry''s Rent Acts which runs as follows: (2)
The statutory tenant has no estate or property as tenant at all, but has a purely personal right to retain possession of the property. The tenancy has been called "nothing more than a status of irremovability" or "a permanency of tenure" and it has been said that the tenant who has been described with some degree of vituperation is "not a tenant at all in the sense that he has an estate. He has a merely personal right of occupation".
Again at page 203, the learned author says as follows:
A contractual tenancy is assignable, unless it otherwise provides, and vests in the trustee in bankruptcy on the bankruptcy of the tenant and in his personal representatives on his death. It is immaterial that the tenant may have claimed the benefit of the Acts by obtaining an order reducing the rent to the standard rent. On the other hand, it follows from the personal nature of a statutory tenancy that it cannot be assigned either inter vivos or by will and does not vest in the tenant''s trustee in bankruptcy or personal representatives.
(1) The Bengal Non-Agricultural Tenancy (Temporary Provisions) Act, (Ben. IX of 1940).
(2) R.E. Megarry: The Rent Acts, 7th edition (1953), pages 194-195.
In the case of Sutton v. Dorf (1932) 2 K.B. 304, it has also been held that a statutory tenancy under the Rent Restriction Acts is not property of the statutory tenant within the meaning of Section 167 of the Bankruptcy Act, 1914, and, therefore, it does not pass to his trustee in bankruptcy u/s 63 of that Act, and is not extinguished on a disclaimer of it by the latter.
Thus it seems to us that Jugal, on the events that have happened, had no interest in the estate but a mere personal right which cannot be transferred, and the Plaintiff really purchased nothing in the auction sale and could not maintain his suit for possession. In our opinion, therefore, the view taken by the learned Judges in the courts below was wrong and their decision should be set aside.
This appeal, therefore, must succeed and is allowed and the suit is dismissed. The Appellant will get his costs throughout from Plaintiff-Respondent No. 1, the hearing fee of this appeal being assessed at three gold mohurs.
Mallick, J.
I agree.