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TMI Blog1987 (11) TMI 377X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... adesh, took on lease a premises at Barabanki belonging to the respondent for the purpose of running a Laprosy Training Centre. The respondent was thus the landlord, and the appellant the tenant, in respect of the premises within the meaning of s. 3(a) of the Rent Act. This Act has been enacted "to provide, in the interests of the general public, for the regulation of letting and rent of, and the eviction of tenants from, certain classes of buildings situated in urban areas, and for matters connected therewith." Section 20 of the Act bars the institution of a suit for the eviction of a tenant, notwithstanding the termination of his tenancy, except on the grounds specified in sub-section (2) of that section but none of these grounds were pleaded by the respondent. S. 21 of the Act enables a prescribed authority to order the eviction of a tenant in two situations, subject to certain conditions and limitations. These situations are: (a) where the landlord requires the premises for his own use and (b) where, the building being in a dilapidated condition, he desires to demolish the same and put up a new construction. These situations also do not prevail here. The Landlord, howe ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ) of s. 2(1) of the Rent Act: "2(1)(a) any building of which the Government or a local authority or a public sector Corporation is the landlord." S. 3(0) was left unamended. However, the above Ordinance was allowed to lapse. Thus the amendment had become inoperative by the time the suit in the present case was instituted. (d) The next amendment of the Rent Act was by U.P. Ordinance No. 28 of 1983 promulgated on 18.5.1983. This revived the amendment made by the 1977 Ordinance which had been allowed to lapse. This time this amendment was not allowed to lapse on the expiry of the ordinance but was kept alive by five-successive Ordinances: No. 43 of 1983 dated 12.10.83, No. 6 of 1984 dated 24.3.84, No. 8 of 1984 dated 7.5.84, No. 20 of 1984 dated 22.10.84, and finally no. 9 of 1985 dated 26.4.85. All these amendments were made effective from 18.5.1983 in so far as the provision presently under consideration is concerned. The last of these, it may be noted, was promulgated subsequent to the judgment of the High Court presently under appeal. (e) Finally, the U.P. Legislature enacted Act No. 17 of 1985 on 20.8.85 "regularising" the spate of legislation by ordinanc ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Government in respect of premises taken on lease or requisitioned by the Government". The language s. 2(1)(a) of the Rent Act, as it stood before its amendment in 1976, left no doubt in any one's mind that the legislature intended only to exclude buildings belonging to the Government or any local authority and those taken on lease or requisitioned by Government and rented out by it to others. The only object of the 1976 amendment was to extend the above exclusion also in buildings owned or let out by local authorities and public sector corporations. This was sought to be done by providing that the Act would not apply to 'public buildings' and inserting a definition of that expression in s. 3(o). That definition was, no doubt, phrased somewhat broadly. But, having regard to the previous history as well as the language of the subsequent legislation already referred to above, there can be no doubt that the legislature never intended to exclude the operation of the Rent Act vis-a-vis premises of which the Government (and, hereinafter, this expression will take in also a reference to local authorities and public corporations) was neither the owner nor the landlord but merely a tena ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... anguage deliberately introduced by the 1976 amendment. No doubt, prior to the amendment, only buildings of which the Government was owner or landlord were excluded from the Act. But the Legislature clearly intended a departure from the earlier position. If the intention was merely to extend the benefit to premises owned or let out by public corporations, it could have been achieved by simply adding a reference to such corporations in s. 2(1)(a) and (b) as they stood earlier. Reading s. 2(1)(a) & (b) as they stood before amendment and the definition in s. 3(o) side by side, the departure in language is so wide and clear that it is impossible to ignore the same and hold that the new definition was just a reenactment of the old exemption. The exclusion was earlier restricted to buildings owned by the Government and buildings taken on lease or requisitioned by Government and granted by it by creating a tenancy in favour of some one. The amendment significantly omitted the crucial words present in the earlier legislation which had the effect of restricting the exclusion to tenancies created by the Government, either as owner or as landlord. Full effect must be given to the new definiti ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nything contained in s. 2", it permits an application for eviction being moved under section 21(1)(a) of the Act by a landlord against any tenant but in the limited circumstance set out in that sub-section viz. that the landlord has been in occupation of a public building but had to vacate it as he had ceased to be in the employment of the Government, local authority or Corporation. In other words, the landlord of a building in which the Government is a tenant could have moved an application under s. 21(1)(a) read with s. 21(1A). This is what is prohibited by s. 21(8) absolutely in view of clauses (ii) and (iv) of Explanation 1 to sub-section (1) being non-existent. S. 21(8) makes it clear that while a landlord who is compelled to vacate a public building occupied by him due to cessation of his employment can proceed under the Act to evict any tenant occupying his property so that he may use his own property for his residential purposes, he will not be able to do so where his tenant is the Government, a local authority or a public Corporation. Thus read,s. 21(8) does not become otiose or redundant by accepting the wider interpretation of s. 3(o). This objection of the appellan ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... propriate in the context of the present legislation for a number of reasons. In the first place, such an interpretation does not fit into the legislative history we have traced earlier. It does not explain why the legislature should have, while enacting the 1976 amendment, omitted certain operative words and used certain wider words instead. As we have pointed out earlier, if the idea had only been to add to the exclusion buildings owned or let out by public sector corporations, that result could have been achieved by a minor amendment to s. 2(1)(a) as it stood earlier. A conscious and glaring departure from the previous language must be given its due significance. Secondly, the Rent Act is a piece of legislation which imposes certain restrictions on a landlord and confers certain protections on a tenant. It could well have been intention of the legislature that the Government, local bodies and public sector corporations should be free not only from the restrictions they may incur as landlords but also that they need not have the protection given to other ordinary tenants. To say that the legislature considered the Government qua landlord to be in a class of its own and hence entit ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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