Punjab-Haryana High Court
Madan Lal vs Smt. Parveen Bala on 28 May, 2010
Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009 -1-
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA
AT CHANDIGARH
Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009
Date of decision : 28.5.2010
Madan Lal ....Petitioner
Versus
Smt. Parveen Bala ......Respondent
CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE S. D. ANAND
Present: Mr. Sudhir Pruthi, Advocate for the petitioner.
Mr. Arun Palli, Senior Advocate with
Mr. Divanshu Jain, Advocate for the respondent.
S. D. ANAND, J.
A plea filed by the respondent-landlady, for ejectment of the petitioner-tenant from the tenanted premises on an averment of personal necessity, came to be negatived by the learned Rent Controller but allowed by the learned Appellate Authority.
The petitioner-tenant is in revision against it. The outer limit within which a Revisional Court can undertake the adjudicatory exercise was provided by the Apex Court in judicial pronouncements reported as Sarla Ahuja Vs. United India Insurance Company Limited 1999 (1) Punjab Law Reporter 805 and Shamshad Ahmad and others Vs. Tilak Raj Bajaj (deceased) through LRs. and others (2008) 9 Supreme Court Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009 -2- **** Cases 1. On perusal thereof, it can safely be culled out that "a reappraisal of evidence can be made, but that should be for the limited purpose to ascertain whether the conclusion arrived at by the fact finding court is wholly unreasonable.") The restriction of revisional powers noticed, the adjudicatory exercise is undertaken as under:-
The respondent-landlady had averred that she requires the tenanted premises for use by her son who requires the same for use as his office. That son of hers is proved on record to be an Advocate and a member of Bar Association, Jalandhar.
Learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner- tenant criticised the finding by arguing that there is complete want of bonafides on the part of respondent-landlady in raising the projected need in view of the fact that she had herself conceded owning a number of other properties but had refrained from clarifying why those properties are not suitable for running of law office by her son. Learned counsel also had a grievance that all those properties had not been indicated in the course of the pleadings at the trial.
Learned counsel for the respondent-landlady argued that the plea raised is oblivious of the statement made by the needy son of respondent-landlady in the course where of he had clarified that all those properties are not in the name of respondent-landlady but are in the name of her husband.Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009 -3-
**** On a meticulous consideration of the issue, the plea on behalf of the petitioner is found to be devoid of merit.
Though there can be no dispute with the factual averment that respondent is found to have testified that she owns other properties and those properties are not mentioned in the course of the petition, at the same time, the statement made by her son as PW-2also cannot be ignored from consideration. In the course of the statement, he testified that his mother owns two properties i.e. tenanted premises and another property in the civil lines Jalandhar. Qua the property in Ashok Nagar, PW-2 testified that is is owned by his father. It is clear from the statement that the petitioner-landlady owns only two properties including the tenanted premises. There is plethora of law on the point that property owned by spouse cannot be considered to be a property owned by the other spouse in terms of the provisions of rent legislation. The plea on behalf of the respondent, in the context of clarification of the aforementioned statement made by the landlady, that it is not uncommon to find a homemaker female describing the properties owned by her husband to be hers and vice-versa. The five distinction between the two is apparent and it was for the petitioner-tenant to obtain a precise clarification from the respondent-landlady. The needful, the argument proceeded, could be done by obtaining identification of the properties owned by her and her husband. The plea deserves acceptance and it is so held accordingly.
It was, then, argued by the learned counsel for the Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009 -4- **** petitioner that the affidavits tendered by the landlady and her son ( in lieu of their respective examination-in-chief) could not be taken into consideration as the verification thereupon is defective. The learned counsel for the respondent argued that though it may not be possible for him to dispute the correctness of the factual averment, it is no longer open to the petitioner-tenant to challenge the correctness of the verification in view of the fact that those witnesses had been subjected to cross-examination and there is no material on record to prove that any prejudice had caused to the petitioner on account of defective manner of verification.
The plea on behalf of the petitioner deserves to be negatived. There is plethora of law to the point that a party which subjects the witnesses to full length cross-examination, cannot be heard to grudge the deficiency in the verification. Reference, in the context, may be made with advantage to Surinder Gupta Vs. Hukam Chand 20092) Law Herald ( P&H) 1046, Civil Revision No.158 of 2009 (M/s Jain Type Foundry and others Vs. Raj Pal Kapoor) by Coordinate Bench of this Court (Surya Kant, J.), and Raj Kumar Vs. Bawa Jai Gopal Singh 2006 (2) R.C.R. (Civil) 14.
The plea shall stand repelled accordingly.
Insofar as the projected need for the son of respondent is concerned, that finding cannot be faulted on any valid score. Though it is in evidence that the respondent-landlady does own yet another property, it would not affect the merits of the plea because a Civil Revision No. 7308 of 2009 -5- **** tenant cannot be allowed to decide which property should the landlady use for the projected need. We have to give it to the landlady to decide upon it.
In the light of foregoing discussion, the petition is held to be denuded of merit and is ordered to be dismissed. The petitioner- tenant shall have two months time from today to vacate the premises aforementioned.
May 28, 2010 (S. D. ANAND) Pka JUDGE