Falshaw, C.J. - (1.) THIS is a landlord's revision petition against the order of the Appellate Authority fixing the fair rent of the premises in suit at Rs. 12/8/ - P.M. after the tenant's petition under section 4 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act had been dismissed by the Rent Controller.
(2.) THE facts are that the premises in suit consist of a shop in the town of Bhiwani. The landlord owned a building which was divided into two shops, but in 1955 he removed the partition between the two shops and erected two partitions thus making three shops where formerly only two had existed. The date of this reconstruction is firmly established by the certificate P. 6 dated the 23rd of April 1955 granted by the Municipal Engineer to the effect that there was nothing objectionable in the construction by the landlord and the tenant's application for fixation of fair rent, the contractual rent being Rs. 30/ - p.m. was filed on the 25th of August, 1960. The learned Rent Controller dismissed the application as premature in view of the terms of the notification of the 19th of January, 1957 by which the Punjab Government exempted for five years from the provisions of the Act buildings constructed in the years 1953, 1954 and 1955. This notification was held by Dua and Pandit, JJ. in Balkishan v. Subash Chand, (1961) 63 P.L.R. 723, to be prospective only, with the result that buildings constructed in the years mentioned in the notification were exempted from the provisions of the Act for a period of five years from the date of the notification.
(3.) THE report shows that this decision was delivered on the 22nd of December 1960, but it is apparent that, as has been pointed out by the learned Appellate Authority, it was virtually a dead letter from the start owing to the unfortunate fact that the learned counsel who argued that case before the learned Judges were apparently unware of and so did not draw the attention of the learned Judge to a notification dated the 4th of June 1960 published in the Punjab Government Gazette of the 6th of June 1960 by which the words were added in the original notification "with effect from the date of completion of any such building". This was in fact what was most probably intended from the beginning, but the amendment cleared away any ambiguity which might have existed.;