- (1.) This petition has been filed against the order of the learned Rent Controller declining an application to lead additional evidence by the petitioner-tenants.
(2.) The respondent had filed the petition for eviction of the petitioners from the shop in dispute on the ground of personal necessity. The petitioners had, in response thereto, taken the plea that the ground of personal necessity was false and that the only reason why the respondent had filed the present petition was to increase the rent or to get the premises vacated and sell the same. After the evidence was concluded the petitioner moved the instant application wherein his brother had clandestinely recorded a conversation with the landlord-respondent and wanted to place the same on record. Learned Senior Counsel asserts that in the said conversation the landlord has unequivocally stated that he would not be averse to selling the shop or even exchanging the same for a house owned by the petitioners. Thus, as per learned Senior Counsel the landlord has exposed his real intentions. Further he has argued that the learned Rent Controller has rejected the application on a fallacious ground viz. the protection that the tenant has under Section 13(4) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act under which a successful landlord who alienates the property within a period of one year is liable to restore the possession to a tenant. Learned Senior Counsel has argued that that the admissibility of a tape recorded evidence is now beyond any controversy and since this application was filed immediately after the closure of the evidence and had in fact come into being only after the closure of evidence, the learned Rent Controller had erred in declining the same.
(3.) A perusal of the order of the learned Rent Controller reveals that apart from the ground taken under Section 13(4) of the Act, the learned Rent Controller has relied on an affidavit filed by the respondent-landlord in response to the application for additional evidence wherein he has in fact stated that if the premises in dispute is vacated he would not let it out or sell it but use it himself. Learned Rent Controller has also relied upon a judgment of this Court in Wazir Singh and others v. Jagdeep Singh, 2004 2 RCR(Civ) 700 wherein this Court held that a similar application which had come at the stage of pronouncement could not have been allowed more so, since that evidence had been created for the purpose of the case. Learned Senior Counsel has sought to distinguish this judgment by arguing that in that case the application was moved at the stage of pronouncement of the judgment whereas in the present case the application has been moved immediately after the closure of the evidence of the petitioner and hence cannot be said to be delayed. He has also relied upon a judgment in Adil Jamshed Frenchman (D) by LRs v. Sardar Dastur Schools Trust& Ors., 2005 2 SCC 476 wherein the Hon'ble Supreme Court permitted a tenant to place on record, during the appeal proceedings, some correspondence between the landlord and the third party wherein the landlord had expressed an intention to sell the property and has argued that if such a thing could be produced in appeal, the present application should also have been allowed.;