Siri Ram vs Delhi Cloth and General Mills Company Ltd.

D. Falshaw, C.J.—These two appeals filed by Siri Ram and Chandgi Ram have arisen out of applications filed before the Controller u/s 22 of the Delhi Rent Control Act of 1958, by the Respondent, the Delhi Cloth and General Mills Company Ltd. In each case an order of eviction passed by the Controller was upheld in first appeal by the Rent Control Tribunal under the Act. These second appeals are u/s 39 of the Act which permits a second appeal only where some substantial question of law is involved.

The case of the company was that by virtue of his employment by the company one Jhandu Ram had been allotted one of the quarters erected by the company for the housing of its employees, but Jhandu Ram ceased to be entitled any longer to occupy the quarter when he was dismissed from the service of the company on the 19th of December, 1959, and, since the two present Appellants were occupying portions of the quarters as subtenants of Jhandu Ram, three applications were filed u/s 22 of the Act of 1958 for the ejectment of Jhandu Ram and his two sub-tenants. Orders of eviction against all three were passed and all their appeals were dismissed, and now only the two sub-tenants have come to this Court in second appeal.

The relevant portions of Section 22 read--

Where the landlord in respect of any premises is any company or other body corporate or any local authority or any public institution and the premises are required for the use of employees of such landlord...then, notwithstanding anything contained in Section 14 or in any other law, the Controller may, on an application made to him in this behalf by such landlord place the landlord in vacant possession of such premises by evicting the tenant and every other person who may be in occupation thereof, if the Controller is satisfied--

(a) that the tenant to whom such premises were let for use as a residence at a time when he was in the service or employment of the landlord, has ceased to be in such service or employment;

....

On behalf of the Appellants an attempt was made to raise a question of fact as to whether Jhandu Ram had in fact ceased to be in the service of the company. This was challenged before the Controller by Jhandu Ram who alleged in his written statement that the matter was still sub judice because an application filed by the company before an Industrial Tribunal before which a dispute was pending for approval of the order of dismissal still remained undecided. He stated, however, in evidence that the application of the company had been dismissed, but did not even produce any copy of any order. It was, therefore, rightly found that he had been dismissed from the service of the company in December, 1959.

The main question involved in the appeals is whether Siri Ram and Chandgi Ram, who have been found to be lawful sub-tenants of Jhandu Ram u/s 17 of the Act, are entitled to the protection afforded to sub-tenants by Section 18, Sub-section (1) of which reads--

Where an order for eviction in respect of any premises is made u/s 14 against a tenant, but not against a subtenant referred to in Section 17 and a notice of the sub-tenancy has been given to the landlord, the sub-tenant shall, with effect from the date of the order, be deemed to become a tenant holding directly under the landlord in respect of the premises in his occupation on the same terms and conditions on which the tenant would have held from the landlord, if the tenancy had continued.

It appears to me to be quite impossible to contend that this protects even lawful sub-tenants when an eviction order is passed u/s 22 of the Act. Indeed it specifically refers to eviction orders u/s 14, whereas the special provisions governing eviction u/s 22 specifically exclude the application of the provisions of Section 14. In the circumstances I have no doubt whatever that the words "the tenant and every other person who may be in occupation thereof" in Section 22 include even lawful subtenants.

Although the point was not raised either before the Controller or the Rent Control Tribunal or even in the grounds of appeal in this Court it has been argued that the exclusion of sub-tenants of a tenant ejected u/s 22 from the protection afforded to lawful sub-tenants u/s 18 offends the provisions of Article 14 of the Constitution. It seems to me, however, that there is a clear distinction between premises governed by Section 22, and in particular residential quarters provided by companies for the housing of their employees, which naturally are required for the housing of other employees when the occupants of such quarters leave the service of the company, and premises in general, and the recognition of this distinction does not in any way run counter to the general purpose of the Act for the protection of tenants. The result is that I dismiss the appeals, but leave the parties to bear their own costs.