S.D.ANAND, J. - (1.) RESPONDENT - Rajesh Sood, a practising Advocate of about 11 years standing (as the material obtaining on the file), purchased House No. 3158, Sector 23-D, Chandigarh (a three-storeyed residential accommodation) from its owners, namely Smt. Shubh Kanta Sharma, Rajiv Kumar Sharma and Anil Kumar Sharma. The impugned purchase (by means of sale-deed dated 3.9.2003) was for a consideration of Rs. 15 lacs. The purchase was made jointly by the respondent and his brother Sandeep Sood, who is presently living overseas. The petitioners are in occupation of ground floor of the premises aforementioned as tenants. A family settlement, as between the petitioner and his brother Sandeep Sood, followed on 18.10.2003. In pursuance thereof, the ground floor portion fell to the share of the respondent. He filed an eviction application on various pleas including bona fide personal necessity. The plea was declined by the learned Trial Court, vide judgment dated 2.12.2005. In a finding of reversal, the learned Appellate Authority allowed the appeal filed by the respondents-landlord upholding his plea of bona fide personal requirement and directed the tenant-petitioners to hand over the vacant possession of the premises under reference to the landlord-respondent within three months w.e.f. the date of judgment.
(2.) THE tenants are in revision. Mr. M.L. Sarin, learned Senior Advocate, appearing on behalf of the tenant-petitioners raised the following contentions in order to obtain the invalidation of the finding recorded by the learned Appellate Authority. (It is common ground otherwise that the present revision has to be disposed of only in the context of the plea of bona fide personal requirement and there is presently no challenge to the other grounds raised by the landlord-respondents for ejectment) : 1. The family partition deed dated 18.10.2003 is a sham transaction and had been brought into being just in order to create a ground for eviction. 2. The plea of personal requirement is not bona fide, inasmuch as the respondent continues to share Chamber in the District Courts with his father (who is also a practicing Advocate) and the Vaqalatnamas also continue to bear the names of father and son and a common name plate, bearing the names of both of them, also appears outside the residential house of respondent-father. It is also the plea, in the context, that if there was any element of bona fides in the requirement of landlord-respondent, he would have immediately shifted his residence to the unoccupied first floor of the premises (which has otherwise fallen to the share of his brother Sandeep Sood) who is concededly not living in India presently.
(3.) IN support of the averment that a tenant would have locus standi to prove the sham character of a partition deed of the indicated category, the learned counsel for the petitioners relied upon Vasdev Nath v. Jagdish Parshad Gupta and others, 1993(1) RLR 23.;