A.N.Varma - (1.) THIS petition is directed against concurrent judgments and orders passed by the. Prescribed Authority and the learned Additional District Judge, Dehradun, directing the eviction of the petitioner from premises no. 87, Rajpur Road, Dehradun, known as "Inverness".
(2.) THESE are the essential facts. The State of Uttar Pradesh, the owner and landlord of the premises mentioned above, instituted a suit no. 250 of 1967 in the court of the learned Munsif, Dehradun, on 5-6-67 against B. L. Mehra, the tenant of the premises and the father of the present petitioner. The relief claimed in the suit was for ejectment as well as for Rs. 226.45 as arrears of rent and mesne profits pendente lite and future. The suit was filed on the assertion that B. L. Mehra was a tenant from month to month at a rental of Rs. 112/- per mensum. The property was required by the plaintiff for the establishment of the office of the Forest Department at Dehradun. Consequently a legal notice terminating the tenancy of the defendant was served on the latter on 4-4-1966. B. L. Mehra having failed to comply with that notice the suit had to be instituted for the reliefs mentioned above. The suit was contested by B. L. Mehra on a variety of grounds which, it is not necessary to elaborate here. During the pendency of the suit U. P. Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1972 (hereafter the 1972 Act) came into force, inter alia, taking away the jurisdiction of the civil courts in respect of eviction of persons in unauthorised occupation of public premises. Section 20 (2) of the said Act provided that suits and other proceedings for the reliefs mentioned in Section 15 instituted in any court shall stand transferred to the Prescribed Authority constituted under the said Act. The suit was accordingly transferred by the learned Munsif to the Prescribed Authority. During the pendency of the suit B. L. Mehra died on 21-4-1977 and his legal representatives including the petitioner were substituted on the record in place of B. L. Mehra. Whether the legal representatives were actually substituted or not is a matter on which there is some controversy between the parties which for the present need not be elaborated here. Be that as it may, the Prescribed Authority allowed the application of the State Government and directed the eviction of the petitioner as well as other legal representatives of B. L. Mehra. An order for deposit of rent at the rate determined by the Prescribed Authority was also made. Aggrieved by this order of the Prescribed Authority, two appeals were filed by the petitioner, one against the order of eviction and the other against the rent. Both these appeals have been dismissed by the learned Additional District Judge, Dehradun by his judgment and order dated 20-3-1985.
(3.) IT is the validity of these orders which are the subject of challenge in this petition. The first point urged in support of the petition was that the order of transfer of the suit by the learned Munsif to the Prescribed Authority was unsustainable in law. IT is, however, not necessary to elaborate the grounds upon which the order of transfer was sought to be assailed by the learned counsel in view of the fact that B. L. Mehra had challenged this very order of transfer by way of a writ petition in this Court, being writ petition no. 3669 of 1973, and this Court dismissed the petition. IT is settled law that the principle of res judicata is equally applicable as between the two stages of the same litigation to this extent that a court, whether the trial court or a higher court, having at an earlier stage decided a matter in one way will now allow the parties to reagitate the matter again at a subsequent stage of the same proceedings.-See Satyadhan v. Smt. Deorajin Debi, AIR 1960 SC 941 Para 8. Their Lordships observed that this principle is based on the need of giving a finality to judicial decisions. In view of this settled legal position it is not competent to the petitioner to challenge the correctness of the order of transfer of the civil suit in terms of subsection (2) of Section 20 of the U. P. Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1972. The second and the main contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner was that no order of eviction could legally be passed under the aforesaid Act unless a notice under Section 4 to show cause was served on the occupants of public premises. It was urged that service of a notice under Section 4 was sine qua non for exercise of the jurisdiction conferred on the Prescribed Authority under Section 5 of the Act to order eviction of unauthorised occupants of public premises inasmuch as no notice under that provision was admittedly served either on B. L. Mehra or on his heirs, the order of eviction must, it was argued, be quashed on this preliminary ground. I am unable to agree.;