Kanta Goel v. B. P. Pathak & Ors.

KRISHNA IYER, J.-So heartening to the judges' bosom is the happy ending of a bitterly fought litigation where the law is declarecl by the Court and justice is accomplished by the parties settling the differences, assisted by activist judicial suggestions and promoted by constructive counselling by advocates. Such is the pleasing culmina- 0 tion cl this case which relates to an ejectment proceeding under section 14A of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 (Act 59 of 1958). The Controller directed eviction refusing leave to the tenant to contest the application for eviction. The High Court, in the revision filed b) the tenant, went into an elaborate discussion on many matters but somehow missed a plea fatal to the landlord's claim and affirmed the relief of eviction although on different grounds. The aggrieved tenant E sought special leave to. appeal which was granted and, thanks to tho landlord appearing by caveat even at the preliminary hearing, leave was granted and the appeal itself was heard the very next day. This at the Supreme Court level quick justice has been meted out and for­ tunately our judgment has resulted in a re-adjustment between the parties and, hopefully, the healing of the wounds of litigation. A pro· tracted forensic proceeding makes foes of friends, but a settlement ofl F the dispute in accordance with law and justice makes friends of foes. Some facts need to be narrated for getting the hang of the case and the issues of law raised. The respondent is an Under Secretary to Government in the Housing Ministry. He was in occupation of resi­ dential premises allotted to him by the Central Government and was required by government order to vacate such residential accommoda- G tion on the ground that he owned in Delhi a residential accommodation in his own name. The building we are concerned with i~ 23/6, Shakti Nagar. It is a two-storeyed house but the litigation centres round part of the first-floor. The whole building belonged to ono Pandit Saraswati Das who let out a portion of the first floor consist- ing of 4 rooms and a small enclosure somewhere in August 1968 to the appellant. Shri Das died in 1972 leaving behind the 1 sf respon- H dilnt, two other sons (respondents 2 & 3) and a daughter (respondent 4). It may be stated even here that the proceeding before the Con­ troller was started by the 1st respondent and an objection was raised by the appellant that the other heirs of the late Das were necessary parties they were not impleaded at this stage although the Controller orderl'<l eviction over-ruling the objection. The High Court however, irupleaded the other two sons and the only daughter (respondents 2 to 4) aud taking the view that their presence was necessary for the maintainability of the action, the learned Judge decreed eviction. A crucial objection, lethal to the case of the landlord, considered by the Controller but negatived by him, was raised in the revision peti­ tion but was not adverted to or adjudicated upon by the High Court. Before us Shri Nariman has pressed it again and the fate of this case, so far as we are concerned, rests on the validity of that point. The landlord-1st respondent, after receiving the order from government to vacate, as contemplated in section 14A of the Act, applied for evic­ tion of another tenant who was occupying a three-room tenement on the first floor of the same building. In fact, the first floor of the house consists of two dwelling apartments as it were, one consisting of three rooms and the other of 4 rooms. By definition, 'premises means auy part of a building which is, or is intended to be, let separately for use as a residence ........ In the present case the three room tenement being part of a building and let separately to a tenant, fell within the definition of 'permises'. Admittedly, the landlord exercise his right \Jnder section 14A to recover immediately passession of those pre­ mises. He succeeded, secured possession and kept it vacant. Even at the present time those premises which are adjacent to the suit pre­ mises are in his vacant possession. Shri Narimau's argument is that while it is open to a landlord who is a government servant directed to vacate allotted premises, and clothed with a new right to recover pos­ session of any premises let out by him, to exercise it once, he cannot repeat the exercise ad libitem and go on evicting every tenant of his by using the weapon of section 14A. He relies on the proviso to section 14A(l) to reinforce his submission and we will deal with it presently. Two other contentions urged by the appellant are t11at the first respondent is not his landlord and therefore is disentitled to evict him, under the Act, and secondly, the premises are not in his name and have not been let out by Jum. In any case, the claim of the first res­ pondent that the building in its entirety had been allotted by the late Shri Das by his will to the 1st respondent and his brother the 3rd respondent and that, subsequently, there had been an oral partition between the two whereunder the first floor was allotted in toto to the 1st respondent making him the sole owner and therefore the exclusive landlord, was contested by the appellant-tenant and this nlea should have been allowed to be raised by grant of leave under section 25B by the Controller. The presence of the co-heirs at the High Court le"el was inconsequential. according to the appellant, and their absence at the trial stage vitiated the order of the Controller. We will examine t11ese contentions briefly. The scheme of the statute is plain and has been earlier explained b_y this Court with special reference to sections 14A and 25B. The government servant who owns his house, lets it out profitably. and 1 ' KANTA GOEL v. B. P. PATHAK (Krishna Iyer, !.) 4 I 5 occupies at lesser rent official quarters has to quit but, for that very purpose to be fulfilled, must be put in quick possession of his premises. The legislative project and purpose turn not on niceties of llttle ver• balism but on the actualities of rugged realism, and so, the construc­ tion of section 14A(l) must be illumined by the goal, though guided by the word. We have, therefore, no hesitation in holding that section 14A(l) is available as a ground, if the premises are owned by him as inherited from propositus in whose name the property stood. 'In his name, and "let out by him', read in the spirit of the provision and without violence to the words o;f the section, clearly convey the idea th~t the premises must be owned by him directly and the lease must be under him directly, which is the case where he, as heir, steps into his father's shoes who owned the building in his own name and let it out himself. He represents the former owner and lessor and squarely' falls within section 14A. The accent on 'name' is to pre-empt the common class of benami evasions, not to attach special sanctity to nominalism. Refusing the rule of ritualism we accept the reality of the ownership and landlordism as !]ie touchstone. Nor do we.set much store by the submission that the !st respondent is not a landlord, being only a co-heir and the will in his favour hav- D ing been disputed. Equally without force in our view is the plea tlutt one co-lessor cannot sue for eviction even if the other co-lessors ,'have no objection. Section 2(e) of the Act defines 'landlord' thus : "2 ( e) 'Landlord' means a person who, for the time be­ ing is receiving, or is entitled to receive, the rent of any premises, whether on his own account or on account of or E on behalf of, or for the benefit of, any other person or as a trustee, guardi•an or receiver for any other person or who would so receive the rent or be entitled to receive the rent, if the premises were let to a tenant." 'Tenant', by definition [s. 2(1)] means any person by whom or on ,M1hose account or behalf the rent of any premises is payable. Read F in the context of the Rent Control law, the simple sense of the situa- tion is that there should be a building which is let. There must be a landlord who collects rent and a tenant who pays it to the one whom he recognizes as landlord. The complications of estoppcl or even the concepts of the Transfer of Property Act need not necessarily or in­ flexibly be imported into the proceedings under the rent control law, tried by special Tribunals under a special statute. In this case, rent G was being paid to the late Das who had let out to the appellant, on the death of the former, the rent was being paid by the 1st respon- dent who signed his name and added that it was on behalf of the estate of the deceased Das. At a later stage the rent was being paid to and the receipts issued by the 1st respondent in his own name. Not that the little change made in the later receipts makes much of a difference, but the fact remains that the tenant in this case had been H )'.l'aying the rent to the Jst respondent. Therefore, the latter fell with- .in the definition of 'landlord' for the purposes of the Act. We are 12-436SCI/77 not impressed with the investigation into the Jaw of real property and estoppel between )andlord and tenant, Shri Nariipa11 invited us to make. A fair understanding of the relationship between the parites leaves little room for doµbt that the appellant was the tenant of the premises. The 1st respondent, together with the other respondents, constituted the body of landlords arul, by consent, implicit or other· wise, of the plurality of landlords, one of them representing them all, was colkcting rent. In short, he fµµctioned, for all practical purposes as the \arullord, and was therefore entitled to institute proceedings qua landlord. This Court, in Sri Ram Pasricha(') clarified that a co·owner is as much an owner of the entire property as any sole owner of the property is : "Jurisprudentially, it is not correct to say that a co­ owner of property is not its owner. He owns very part of the com­ posite property alongwith others and it cannot be said that he is only a part owner or a fractional owner of the property . . . . It is, there­ fore, not possible to 'accept the submission that the plaintiff, who is admittedly the landlord and co-owner of the premises, is not the owner of the premises within the meaniqg of section 13 (1 )(f). It is not neces­ sary to establish that the plaintiff is the only owner of the property for the purpose of sectiol! 13(1) (f) as[ong as he is a co-owner of the pro­ perty, being at .the same time acknowledged landlord of the defen­ dants." That case also \Vas one for eviction uncjer the rent control law cf Bengal. The law having been thus put beyond doubt, the contention that the abseqce of the other ccr.owner an record disen­ titled the first respondent froll! suing for eviction, fails. We are not called upon to consider the piquant situation that might arise if some of the co-owners wanted the tenant to continue contrary to the relief claimed by the evicting co"owncr. Shri Nariman urged that the "~II had not been proved and that he had not been given an opportunity to establish his challenge of the will of Shri Das. Jn the f!igh Court t4e other co-heirs were parties and there is nothing on r!"cord to show that they objectecl to the claim of the 1st respondent to the first jjoor oq the strength of t)le will from his father. An objection. for the sah of an objection which has qo realistic foundation, c;mnot be eqtertained seriogsly for the saJce of prpcessual punctiliousness. We cjo not agree with the contrntion. The last, and yet the lethal objection which had been lost sight of in the High Court, although raised there, loomed large before this Court, in Shd Nariman's arguments. The admitted fuct is that on the same ground of the government's order to vacate, the first respondent had e~icted a dwelling house on the first floor and is keeping it vacant. He is again using the same order to vacata passed by the ·govern­ ment to evict the appellant's dwelling house. ·This is obviously con­ trary to the intendment of section l 4A ancl is interdicted by the pro­ visu to section 14A(l). It is true that when an officer is sought to be evicted by the government from its premises he has to be rehabi­ litated in his own house by an accelerated remedial procedure provjd, (1) (1976) 4 s.c.c. 1 ~4 KANTA GOEL v. B. P. PATHAK (Krishna Iyer, !.) 417 ed by section 14A read with section 28B of the Act. But this emer­ gency provision available merely to put the government servant back into his own residential accommodation cannot be used as a weapon for evicting several tenants if he has many houses let out to various persons. The object of section 14A is fulfilled once the landlord recovers immediate possession of his premises from one of his tenants. The right is exhausted thereby and is not available for continual applications for eviction against all other tenants holding under him. Tiiis is m'lde clear by the proviso wllii:h makes plain that the section shall not be coµstrue4 as co11ferring a right on a landlord pwing two or more dwelling houses to recover possession of more th~n oiie dwelling house. Of course it gives him the choice since the proviso states that it shall be lawful for sµch hmdlord to indicate the parti­ cqlar dwel!iqg house among a plurality owned by him, possession of which he intends to recover. He can ordinarily recover one dwelli11g house but no more. In the presi;nt case, admittedly Ile has recover­ ed one dwelling house consisting of a three-room apartment on the first floor by using the precise ground under section 14A(l). It 110cessari!y follows that he cannot use section 141\ for cvj9ting the tenant-appellant from :mother dwelling house. 011 the !~st grmmd, therefore, the appeal ml!st be allowed, although in the circumstmwes we direct tile parties to bear their costs throughoµt. Counsel on both sides, 011 t!ie sl)ggestion by the court, calrnlated to produce a salutary relationship between the parties, agreed that the tljree,room dwelling house which lies vacant (having been evicted un<ler section 14A) will be given possession of to the appellant in eJichange for the appellant making over possession of the 4-room apariment-the premises involved in the present case-together with the appurtenant space. The appellant has agreed to pay a sum of Rs. ZSO/- per month by way of rent for the adjacent three-room apartment into which he will move, within on.e moqth from today anf! surrender posS!'ssion of the 4-room apartment simultaneously. In qse the parties are iable to adjust their differences and the 1st re~poqg~nt makes over the additional space attached to the 4-room tenement for the use of (l)e appellant, he wi!J pay an e;o;tra sum of Rs. 75/- per me11sem or ot1'er p,egotiated figure. On these terms ijgree~ IP before us \)y cpµnsel on both sides, after taking instruc­ tions from their parties, we direct that the lst respon<jen( go mal!:e over possession of the t]j,ee-room .dwelling house on the !lrs( floor aqd take ill ewlJ;mge the •hrnom dw~)ling ho11se which is tile subjeet matter of the present eviction proceedings. We record this under­ taking as indicated above and with this 11),Qdjjjcation, 111J.ow t!le appeal. P.ff,p. Appeal allowed.