SANTRAM Vs. RAJINDER LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A small event may mark a great portent as this tiny proceeding for eviction, from a mini-shop of a little man, will presently disclose.

(2.) The appellant, a Harijan by birth and a cobbler by vocation, was a petty tenant of the eastern half of a shop in Ram Bazar, Simla. The original landlord passed away and his sons, the respondents, stepped into his shoes a legal representatives. He filed a petition for eviction of the appellant-tenant under S. 13 (2) (ii) (b) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, as applied to Himachal Pradesh on the ground that the premises were being used for a purpose other than the one for which they were let out. The Rent Controller having held in favour of the landlord, an eviction order ensued. The appellate authority reversed this finding and dismissed the petition for eviction. The High Court, in revision, reversed the appellate decision and restored the Rent Controller's order. The cobbler-appellant, in the last lap of litigation, has landed in this Court. The poverty of the appellant is reflected in the chequered career of the case in this Court where it was dismissed more than one for default in payment but ultimately, thanks to the persistence of the appellant, he got this Court's order to pay the balance amount extended. He complied with that direction and thus could not be priced out of the justice market, if we may use that expression.

(3.) The short point for adjudication is as to whether the respondent landlord made out the statutory ground for eviction, of having diverted the building for a use radically different from the one for which it was let, without his consent. There is no case of written consent put forward by the tenant. But he contested the landlord's claim by asserting that there was no specific commercial purposes inscribed in the demise and, therefore, it was not possible to postulate a diversion of purpose. Secondly, he urged that, even assuming that the letting was for a commercial purpose, the fact that he had cooked his food or stayed at night in the rear portion of the small shop did not offend against S. 13 (2) (ii) (b) of the Act.