- (1.) JUDGEMENT This is a plaintiffs appeal whose suit for ejectment of the defendant from a certain shop of which they were the landlords stands dismissed on the ground of insufficiency of the notice to quit. The only point urged in this appeal is that the view of the learned judge of the court below that a six months notice to quit was required for termination of the defendants lease was legally erroneous.
(2.) THE plaintiff alleged that the defendant had occupied the shop in 1941 on payment of a monthly rent and the tenancy was from month to month. It was further the case of the plaintiff that having obtained the requisite permission from the District Magistrate under the U.P. Control of Rent and Eviction Act for filing of a suit for ejectment he served upon the defendant a notice to quit under S. 106 (as amended in U.P.) intimating that the tenancy would stand terminated on the expiry of thirty days or one month from the receipt of the notice. The defence in the main was that the tenancy being for manufacturing purposes a notice of six months was required for terminating the same under S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act. It appears that a document in writing was. executed laying down the terms and conditions of the lease but it was never got registered. The court below has recorded a finding that the shop was leased out to the defendant for manufacturing purposes. It has been proved by cogent evidence that the defendant ran a Dal Mill in the shop. This finding has not been seriously challenged by K.C. Agrawal, learned counsel for the plaintiff appellant. Therefore, the decision in this appeal is bound to proceed on the footing that the lease was for manufacturing purposes. The point which has been raised by Sri Agrawal in regard to the question of the validity of the notice is that no yearly tenancy was created as no registered document creating such a tenancy came into being as required by S. 107 of the Transfer of Property Act and the lessor not having executed a registered document, the tenancy would, in law, be from month to month. On this basis it is submitted that even though the lease was for manufacturing purposes it would not be a yearly lease as there was no registered document in respect thereof and for the purposes of S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act it would fall in the category of the leases from month to month. Reliance has been placed on a Single Judges decision of this Court in the case of Kishan Lal v. Lal Ram Chander, AIR 1952 All 634. In the alternative it is submitted that the parties having failed to get any lease deed registered the tenancy which came into existence was a tenancy-at-will and no notice under S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act for termination of such a tenancy was required in law. For this purpose reliance has been placed on the decision of a Division Bench of the erstwhile Oudh Chief Court in the case of Janaki v. Kanhaiya Lal, AIR 1936 Oudh 102.
(3.) NO doubt the ratio of the above mentioned cases supports the contentions of the learned counsel for the plaintiff appellant, but my attention has been drawn to a decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Ram Kumar Das v. Jagdish Chandra Deo, AIR 1952 SC 23 by G.P. Tandon, learned counsel appearing for the defendant respondent and having heard K.C. Agrawal at some length I am of the opinion that the decision of the Supreme Court in AIR 1952 SC 23 renders the decisions in the above mentioned two cases cited by the learned counsel for the appellant ineffective as precedents. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court have declared that S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act lays down a rule of construction which is to be applied when there is no period agreed upon between the parties and in such cases the duration has to be determined by a reference to the object or purpose for which the tenancy is created. Their Lordships further declared that the rule of construction embodied in S. 106 applied not only to express leases of uncertain duration but also to leases implied by law which may be inferred from possession and acceptance of rent and other circumstances. The law which has been clearly enunciated by their Lordships of the Supreme Court recognises the leases which come into existence by implication as being subject to the provisions of S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act as far as the determination of their duration is concerned. In the present case though no registered document was executed but it was established that the possession was given to the defendant by the plaintiff, rent was paid and accepted for a long number of years and it had further been proved that the defendant took the shop avowedly for running a Dal Mill. It is manifest that a tenancy was created for a manufacturing purpose. ;