Agarwala, J. - (1.) THIS is an appeal against an order of a learned single Judge of this Court dismissing a writ petition.
(2.) THE Appellant Smt. Shanti Devi, wife of Mangal Sen, purchased the house in dispute from Sardar Kartar Singh and Ram Chandra. It appears that Ram Chandra was in occupation of the house and he continued to remain in possession even after the house was sold with the result that the Appellant had to file a suit for his eviction and for possession. The suit was decreed and possession was obtained by the Appellant through the Court Amin on the 4th November, 1953. After the delivery of possession to her, two persons, Sri K.N. Gupta and Sri Om Prakash Agarwala, applied to the Station Staff Officer, Meerut Cantonment, for allotment of the house to them. The Station Staff Officer asked the Appellant to show cause why the house should not be allotted to a tenant. In reply to this letter the Appellant wrote to the Station Staff Officer saying that she had purchased the house for her own personal use, that further litigation with regard to the house was still pending in the civil court and that, therefore, there should not be any question of allotment at least till the litigation came to an end. The Station Staff Officer asked her to supply the particulars of the litigation and the reasons why she required this house for her personal use, when she was already in occupation of another house. To this letter the Appellant replied giving the particulars of the litigation and then asked that since she wanted this house for the purpose of a school, 'M.V. Junior High School', which she was herself running, the house nay be allotted to her in the name of the school. The Station Staff Officer however allotted the house to Respondent No. 2; he did not explain why he did not allot the house to Smt. Shanti Devi nor why he was allotting the house to Respondent No. 2. Thereupon the Appellant filed an application under Article 226 of the Constitution in this Court which came up for hearing before a learned single Judge of this Court who dismissed it on the ground that the Station Staff Officer should be taken to have considered her application and there was no reason to interfere with his order. It does not seem to have been brought to the notice of the learned Judge that the house was in occupation of the owner prior to its sale to the Appellant, that after the sale it came into occupation of the Appellant, and that at no stage had the house been let to any tenant. In this appeal it is urged that since the house was not tenanted, and the owner for the time being has been always in occupation, Section 9 of the U.P. Cantonments (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act under which the order of allotment has been made was not attracted, and the order of allotment was made without jurisdiction. The facts stated above appear from the record and were controverted. In our opinion the contention of learned Counsel for the Appellant is correct. The matter is concluded by a Division Bench ruling of this Court in Sri Lachhman Das v. Rent Control and Eviction Officer, Bareilly, 1953 A.W.R. (H.C.) 125. That was a case under the U.P. (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act, 1947 wherein, with reference to Section 7 of the Act, it was held: It is only when an accommodation falls vacant (and now after the amendment of Section 7 by Act 24 of 1952, or is about to fall vacant) that the District Magistrate acquires the jurisdiction to make an order of allotment. When an owner of property, being in possession of it and actually occupying it, transfers the ownership and the possession thereof to a transferee the ownership and possession vest in the transferee from the moment of transfer and the transferee steps into the shoes of the owner. In such a case the accommodation cannot be said to have fallen vacant and the Rent Control and Eviction Officer has no jurisdiction to make the allotment. What is contemplated by 'accommodation falling vacant' under Section 7 in the case of the landlord himself in occupation is that the accommodation is not intended to be used by the owner for his own purposes, but is intended to be let out to a tenant, or if the occupier is a tenant that the tenant will cease to occupy it. Where a person purchases the rights of ownership and gets into possession of the accommodation from the previous owner, who was in fact occupying the accommodation for his own purposes, it cannot be said that at any point of time the accommodation had fallen vacant.
(3.) THE provisions of Section 7 of the U.P. (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act are practically the same as Section 9 of the U.P. Cantonments (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act, and the principles laid down by the Division Bench in the aforesaid case fully apply to a case falling under Section 9 of the U.P. Cantonments (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act.;