Smt. Kirna Devi vs M.M. Berry

D.S. Lamba, J.—The fasts leading to this Civil revision are that Smt. Kirna Devi landlord petitioner moved the learned Rent Controller, Patiala, u/s 13 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (hereinafter called the Act), for ejectment of the tenant-respondent M.M. Berry, from house No. 562/2, situated in Gurnanak Street, Patiala, inter alias on the grounds :-

(1) that the respondent was her tenant of the said premises on a monthly rent of Rs. 80/- and that he had tailed to pay the rent from May to August, 1974, amounting to Rs. 320/- besides house-tax at the rate of Rs. 12/- per cent;

(2) that on account of rains in the months of June and July, 1974, the house in question had become unfit and unsafe for human habitation and she required the sane for reconstruction; and

(3) that the tenancy had been terminated vide notices dated April 17, and July 2, 1974 besides her having filed the present ejectment application without any prejudice to the previous petition already pending on the ground of personal necessity.

This application was resisted by the respondent denying the relationship of landlord and tenant between the parties but admitting that he was tenant of the premises in dispute at the rate of Rs. 80/- per mensem, including all types of rates taxes, repairs etc, taken on rent from one Siri Ram, whose order son Surinder Kumar, after the death of Siri Ram, had been collecting rent. Subsequently Sham Lal, another son of Siri Ram deceased, had been collecting the rent and that the said Sham Lal wanted to charge six months'' rent in advance and to enhance the rent to Rs. 150/- per month, which the respondent declined. It wag pleaded that rent for the months of March and April 1974 had already been paid in Court He, however, added that rent for the month of May 1974 was offered to Kirna Devi, but she refused to accept the same and that she also refused to accept the amount sent to her by money order, vide Receipt No. 437'', dated June 25, 1974. He further asserted that rent for the months of June and July 1974, sent through money orders vide Receipt Nos. 088 and 1199, dated July 24 and August 26, 1974, respectively, was also not accepted by Kirna Devi. It was, further averred that in view of the strict and drastic provisions of the Act, he bad to tender four months rent from 1st of May to 31st of August, 1974, amounting to Rs. 320/ besides Rs. 4/- as interest and Rs. 25/- as costs. It was denied that the premises in dispute were unfit and unsafe for human habitation.

On the pleadings of the parties the learned Rent Controller framed the following issues on November 2, 1974.

Whether the tender is valid ? O.P.R.

Whether the property is unfit and unsafe for human habitation ? O.P.A.

Whether the notice u/s 106, Transfer of Property Act, is legal and proper ? O.P.A.

Relief

Later, on the application of the tenant-respondent an additional issue No. 3-A was also framed on January 16, 1975, which runs as follows :

3-A Whether there is a relationship of landlord and tenant between the parties ? O.P.A.

The landlord examined her husband Sohan Lal as A.W. 1 and closed her evidence in affirmative on March 18, 1975. The tenant respondent then examined Satpal R.W. 1 and himself appeared as R.W. 2 on May 23, 1975.

However, on May 28, 1975, the landlord bad moved an application for additional evidence by way of rebuttal, praying that she may be allowed to lead evidence as two receipts, dated 1st February 1974 and 1st December 1973, alleged to have been executed by Sham Lal had been brought on the record by the tenant-respondent and that she be allowed an opportunity to rebut the same. This application was resisted by the tenant and the same was dismissed by the learned Rent Controller, vide his order, dated August 2, 1975, and the case was fixed for arguments finally, on August 28, 1975, when Shri S.K. Goyal, counsel for the landlord, made a statement that he did not want to press the application for ejectment and the same may be dismissed as withdrawn. On this the statement of the tenant, M.M. Berry, and his counsel Shri Dev Raj Garg was recorded, which was to the following effect :-

The respondent objects to the withdrawal of the application, he has been harassed and he be awarded special costs.

After recording the above statements. Shri M.M. Bhalla, Rent Controller, Patiala passed the following order on August 20, 1975 :-

The application is dismissed as withdrawn. There is no order as to costs. Ahlmad to consign the file.

Feeling aggrieved against the aforesaid order, the tenant-respondent went up in appeal before the appellate Authority and agitated the aforesaid order of the Rent Controller inter alia on the following ground :-

(1) that the counterfoil receipt Exhibit A. 2 was a stolen or forged document and the landlord had not herself appeared in the witness fox to prove her case;

(2) that the landlord should have been hardened with exemplary costs, and

(3) that the relationship of landlord and tenant was not proved between the parties, and the application for ejectment was withdrawn by the counsel for the landlord as the case was a fraudulent one and that the same was withdrawn with mala fide intention as another similar application between the parties was pending in the Court of Shri S.S. Tiwana, Rent Controller, Patiala.

The learned Appellate Authority, Patiala, held that there was no clear and cogent evidence about the alleged fabrication of the receipt, Exhibit A. 2, and, therefore, no case for taking any action under the provisions of section 479-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure was made out. It was observed that the impugned order of the learned Rent Controller was silent as to why he had not awarded the costs of the tenant-respondent while dismissing the landlord''s application as withdrawn and that he should have taken into consideration the long drawn out litigation between the parties at the instance of the landlord from 2nd September, 1974, to 28th August, 1975, in which the tenant-respondent must have suffered a lot in terms of money or in terms of wastage of times in attending the Court and procuring evidence. Under these circumstances, the learned Appellate Authority assessed counsel fee at Rs. 100/- and other expenses etc, at Rs. 200/-, and awarded Rs. 300/- as total costs The learned appellate Authority, however, held that the tenant respondent bad failed to substantiate that there was no relation of landlord and tenant between the parties, and vide order, dated May 27, 1976 accepted with costs the appeal of the tenant respondent. Feeling dissatisfied with the aforesaid order of the Appellate Authority, the land'' lord has approached this Court in revision.

6 The Learned Counsel appearing for the landlord-petitioner has argued that the order passed by the learned Rent Controller was not an order on merits as he simply permitted the landlord to withdraw her application and consequently dismissed the application as withdrawn without burdening the landlord with costs. According to the Learned Counsel for the tenant-respondent was not a person aggrieved in terms of section 15(l)(b) of the Act, and, therefore, the appeal tiled by him before the Appellate Authority under that Section was not maintainable. I regret my inability to accept this contention of the Learned Counsel for the landlord-petitioner. Section 15 (1)(b) of the Act reads thus :-

(1)(b) Any person aggrieved by an order passed by the Controller may, within fifteen days from the date of such order or such longer period as the appellate authority may allow for reasons to be recorded in writing, prefer an appeal in writing to the appellate authority having jurisdiction...........

In the circumstances of the present case it has now to be seen whether the tenant respondent was a "person aggrieved" by the order in question of the learned Rent Controller. In the light of the facts narrated above it is clear that the litigation between the parties, at the instance of the landlord, continued from September 2, 1974, to August 28, 1975, and when the case reached the stage of arguments, the counsel for the landlord made a statement before the Rent Controller that he did not want to press the application for ejectment and that the same may be dismissed as withdrawn This request was opposed by the tenant and his counsel on the ground that as the tenant had been unnecessarily harassed, he be awarded special costs. The learned Rent Controller did not take into consideration the amount spent by the tenant-respondent in pursuing the litigation all this time and the harassment caused to him in defending the case in court, and simply dismissed the ejectment application as withdrawn without awarding special costs to the tenant respondent as prayed by him in this situation the tenant-respondent was certainly a "person aggrieved" by the aforesaid order of the Kent Controller and his case was thus fully covered by section 15(1)(b) of the Act which gave him the right of appeal. No doubt the term "person aggrieved " is not defined in the Act, but in Ex parte Official Receiver in Re Reed, Bowen & Company (1887) 12 Q.B.D. 174 Lord Esher, M.R., observed that a "person Aggrieved must be a man against whom a decision has been pronounced which has wrongfully refused him something which he had a right to demand". In view of the aforesaid observation and the circumstances of the case, I have no hesitation to hold that the tenant respondent as a person aggrieved and the appeal filed by him u/s 15(1)(b) of the Act was maintainable.

In the present case the tenant-respondent has paid the arrears of rent on the very first day of his appearance in Court and if the landlord had not pressed and pursued her eviction application on other grounds, the matter would have ended there, but she still continued the litigation for about year more. It appears that ultimately when she felt that her application was not likely to succeed, a prayer on her behalf was made to withdraw the application, and the learned Rent Controller allowed that prayer without taking into consideration the harassment caused, the time taken and the money spent by the tenant-respondent in pursuing the litigation. In Guranditra Ram v. Murari Lal (1974) 76 P.L.R. 579, R.S. Narula J. (now Hon''ble the Chief Justice) held that howsoever vide may appear to be the power vested in a Rent Controller to coin out his own procedure which is not inconsistent with any provision of the Act, such power has to be carefully hedged within certain limits, the limitation placed on that power being that the procedure adopted by him must be orderly and consistent with the rules of natural justice. In the light of these observations, the order of the Rent Controller refusing to grant special costs to the tenant-respondent while dismissing the landlord''s application as withdrawn, cannot be said to be consistent with the rules of natural justice, and, therefore, the order of the Appellate Authority allowing costs to the tenant-respondent does not contravene the positive provisions of the law and the same must he held to be consistent with equity and the rules of natural justice.

For the foregoing reasons, there is no merit in this revision petition and the same is dismissed with costs, which are assessed at Rs. 100/-.