Civil Revision No.56 of 2009 (O&M) -1- IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Revision No.56 of 2009 (O&M) Date of decision: 13.01.2009 Ramesh Chand .............. Petitioner Vs. Janta Pustkalya .............Respondent Present: Mr.Adarsh Jain, Advocate for the petitioner. CORAM:HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? Yes 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not ? Yes 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest ? Yes -.- K.KANNAN, J 1. The landlord which was a society applied for eviction of the premises on the ground of requirement of the tenanted property for further accommodation of the library needs. The Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority upheld the claim of the landlord and the tenant is in revision petition before this Court. 2. The first contention of the tenant was that the resolution that authorized the filing of the petition was only to file a petition for ejectment on the ground of recovery of rent and the need spelt out in the petition was not brought out in the resolution. This objection, in my view, cannot be sustained. It is wholly an internal matter on how the trustees viewed the issue for authorising a particular person to represent the Trust. So long as there was a valid resolution empowering one of the members in the Trust to institute an action for eviction, it is wholly necessary that the resolution must also spell out the grounds of eviction correctly. 3. The other contention of the tenant is that the landlord had not brought out clearly that he had other portions of the property available and Civil Revision No.56 of 2009 (O&M) -2- that such other portions were not sufficient for the requirement. In the absence of pleadings, the landlord was not entitled to lead evidence in that regard and the consideration of the same by Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority permitting the landlord to give evidence was vitiated. He relies on the decision of this Court in Joginder Singh Sawhney Vs. Harbans Lal 2003 (2) PLR 242 that the landlord if he failed to plead the basic ingredients of Section 13(3)(a)(i) of the Act making averments in the application that he was not occupying another residential building in the concerned urban area and has not vacated such residential building, the petition deserved dismissal. The requirement of pleading must be understood in the context of what the statute spells out. The statute requires that the landlord cannot obtain eviction for his own requirement, if he had any other property available. So long as there is evidence and there is pleading of one or the other parties in that regard and parties had joined issues on that aspect, in my view, a petition cannot fail by the only fact that the landlord had not spelt out in his petition that there were other properties available. In this case, there is no definite evidence that the other portions of building which the landlord had in his occupation was sufficient. The Appellate Authority has particularly referred to the evidence of AW-2 Mahabir Parsad and AW1 Hardawari Lal to say that the existing building was not sufficient to accommodate the readers visiting the library and they required the premises for expanding the reading room. The Appellate Authority has also adopted a reasoning consistent with law that the tenant himself was pleading that there was a scope for expansion of the space for the reading room in some other fashion than expanding it by increasing the property that had been demised in favour of the tenant. The Appellate Authority had referred to a decision in M/s British Motor Car Company Pvt. Ltd. Vs. Sewak Sabha Charitable Trust 2003(2) RCR 606 where this Civil Revision No.56 of 2009 (O&M) -3- Court laid down that where an ejectment petition had been filed by the Trust in its own name and not by the trustees, then there was no illegality and also several other decisions of this Court and the Hon'ble Supreme Court which spelt out the fundamental proposition and that if the landlord had explained the reasons for the suitability of the premises for his bona fide requirement then the tenant was liable to be ejected. There is nothing amiss in the reasoning of the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority which calls for an interference in revision petition before me. The revision petition is accordingly dismissed. (K. KANNAN) JUDGE January 13, 2009 Pankaj*