TMI Blog1977 (4) TMI 174X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nant sought special leave to. appeal which was granted and, thanks to the 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 fortunately our judgment has resulted in a re-adjustment between the parties and, hopefully, the healing of the wounds of litigation. A protracted forensic proceeding makes foes of friends, but a settlement of 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 residential premises allotted to him by the Central Government and was required by government order to vacate such residential accommodation on the ground that he owned in Delhi a residential accommodation in his own name. The building we are concerned with is 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 one Pandit Saraswati Das who let out a portion of th ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... section 14A. He relies on the proviso to section 14A(1) to reinforce his submission and we will deal with it presently. Two other contentions urged by the appellant are that the first respondent is not his landlord and therofore is disentitled to evict him, under the Act, and secondly, the premises are not in his name and have not been let out by him. In any case, the claim of the first respondent 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 plea 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 level was inconsequential, according to the appellant, and their absence at the trial stage vitiated the order of the Controller. We will examine these contentions briefly. The scheme of the statute is plain and has been earlier explained by this Court w ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... collects rent and a tenant who pays it to the one whom he recognizes as landlord. The complications of estoppel or even the concepts of the Transfer of Property Act need not necessarily or inflexibly be imported into the proceedings under the rent control law, tried by special Tribunals under a special statute. In this case, rent 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 respondent 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 paying the rent to the 1st respondent. Therefore, the latter fell within the definition of 'landlord' for the purposes of the Act. we are 12--436SCI/77 not impressed with the investigation into the law of real property and estoppel between landlord and tenant, Shri Nariman invited us to make. A fair understanding of the relationship between the parites leaves little room for doubt t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... The admitted fact is that on the same ground of the government's order to vacate, the first respondent had evicted a dwelling house on the first floor and is keeping it vacant. He is again using the same Order to vacate passed by the government to evict the appellant's dwelling house. This is obviously contrary to the intendment of section 14A and is interdicted by the proviso to section 14A(1). It is true that when an officer is sought to be evicted by the government from its premises he has to be rehabilitated in his own house by an accelerated remedial procedure provid (1) (1976) 4 s.c.c. 184 ed by section 14A read with section 28B of the Act. But this emergency 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. This is made clear by the. proviso which ma ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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