Mahajan, J. - (1.) THIS is a petition for revision under Section 15(5) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, and is directed against the order of the District Judge, as appellate authority reversing on appeal the decision of the Rent Controller rejecting the landlord's application for eviction of the tenant.
(2.) THE premises in dispute are a shop, now divided into three parts, in which the business of a halwai, cloth merchant and general merchant is being carried on at the present moment. These premises belonged to Prabhu Dayal and were rented out by him to Chetan Ram. According to Chetan Ram he took the premises on lease in 1940 and it is stated by him that at the time when he took them on lease they were already divided into three parts. He further went on to say that initially he carried on the business in these premises of a halwai, cloth merchant and a general merchant along with his sons and later on in partnership with some strangers. The only rent note available and which has not been produced is of the year 1956. That rent note was not produced because in an earlier case, when the parties came up in revision to this Court, they agreed that the shop in dispute was taken by Chetan Ram for the purpose of running the business of a halwai. It is not Chetan Ram's case that the premises were sub -let or that the sub -tenants paid rent of the premises direct to the landlord ; on the contrary, he has stated that the rent was collected by him from the occupants and thereafter paid to the landlord. Therefore, the relationship of landlord and tenant was only as between him and the landlord. There is no evidence on the record that the landlord ever recognised the sub -tenants. The eviction was sought on a number of grounds, but the principal grounds are ; - 1. non -payment of rent; 2. sub -letting ; and 3. perversion of user. Oh all these grounds the Rent Controller found in favour of the tenants with the result that the landlord's petition for eviction of the tenants was dismissed.
(3.) ON appeal, the appellate authority has taken a totally divergent view on all these three matters and has found that the tenant was in arrears of rent and the arrears were not validly tendered at the first hearing, that there has been subletting and that the premises have been used for a purpose other than the one for which they were taken on lease. All these three matters have been contested by the learned Counsel for the Petitioner in the present petition for revision.;