- (1.) The only question raised in. this appeal is whether or not the rights of a statutory tenant can be transferred.
(2.) The Defendant No. 1 is the Appellant before us. The suit out of which this appeal arises was a suit for declaration of title and for possession and for other reliefs. The Plaintiff is the auction-purchaser. The Plaintiff purchased the interest of one Jugal in a certain jama. The date of that purchase is April 17, 1943. It appears that prior to that date in September, 1939, the landlord had obtained a decree for ejectment against Jugal. The execution of that decree was stayed under the provisions of Non-agricultural Tenancy Act (1) but the result of that decree was that Jugal remained in the premises as a statutory tenant. The question, therefore, is what interest, if any, did the Plaintiff purchase in the land in question in the auction sale. In other words, could the right of Jugal which was the right of a statutory tenant be transferred and did the Plaintiff purchase anything which would entitle him to claim possession of the premises against the Defendant?
(3.) Mr. Banerjee appearing in support of this appeal cited before us a passage from Megarry's Rent Acts which runs as follows: (2) The statutory tenant has no estate or property as tenant at all, but has a purely personal right to retain possession of the property. The tenancy has been called "nothing more than a status of irremovability" or "a permanency of tenure" and it has been said that the tenant who has been described with some degree of vituperation is "not a tenant at all in the sense that he has an estate. He has a merely personal right of occupation".;