Case: Delhi Development Authority Vs. Durga Chand Kaushish

2. The plaintiff-respondent had sued for a declaration that the annual rent of Rs. 365/- payable on a piece of land situated in Basti Ara Kashan, Paharganj, New Delhi, leased to him from 1-4-31 for a period of 90 years on behalf of the Secretary of State for India could not be enhanced during the subsistence of the lease for the grant of which he had paid a premium of Rs. 18,054/-. The plot of land leased was entrusted for management on behalf of the Government of India to the Delhi Improvement Trust, and, thereafter, after the abolition of the Delhi Improvement Trust in 1957, to the Delhi Development Authority under Section 60 of the Delhi Development Act of 1957. The plaintiff also claimed refund of Rs. 5,935.25 ps. which had been retrospectively demanded and realised from him as arrears of enhanced rent from 1-1-52 to 30-6-63 after issuing a warrant of arrest dated 2-6-64 against him. Furthermore, the plaintiff prayed for an injunction to restrain the appellant, acting on behalf of the lessor, from realising an annual rent in excess of Rs. 365/- for the duration of the lease claimed to be for 90 years.3. The defendant-appellant pleaded, inter alia, that the suit was barred by the provisions of S. 453 (b) (2) of the Delhi Development Act. Want of notice under Section 80 C.P.C., upon the Union of India, a co-defendant, was also pleaded. These questions were decided against the defendants by a learned Judge of the Delhi High Court, who tried the case and dismissed the suit on merits, as well as by the Division Bench which had allowed the plaintiffs appeal and decreed the suit on merits. Questions decided against the defendants at both stages in the Delhi High Court are not before us for decision. The only question argued before us was whether the interpretation of the lease deed (Ex. P2), dated 17-9-31, between the Secretary of State for India and the appellant, by the learned Judge who tried the case and held that rent could be enhanced within the period of 90 years, was correct or the interpretation adopted by the Division Bench, which allowed plaintiffs appeal after holding that the enhancement clause could only operate upon the grant of a fresh lease, after the expiry of the first period of 90 years under the lease, was correct.

Court's reasoning:
15. After having considered all the argument advanced on behalf of the defendant appellant, we are quite unconvinced that covenant 9 could apply before the termination of the initial period of 90 years. It is by reading the lease deed as a whole that we find it impossible to concur with a view based upon the decisive effect to be given to a few words in the proviso to covenant 9 torn away from the context of the deed read as a whole. We think that covenant No. 9 operates only at the end of the term of 90 years because it says so.We think that the proviso to covenant No. 9 could be said to suffer from the vice of an uncertainty which can only be removed by ignoring the words creating this uncertainty. We think that, in such a case, the ambiguous words can be disregarded so that the terms of the earlier operative part of the demise, which are clear, must prevail.28. We think that the argument that the rule that a grant, capable of two interpretations, should be construed in favour of the grantee, is obsolete and that we should employ some test of public interest amounts to a plea that we should depart from established canons of construction of deeds containing grants on grounds of public policy which has been described as an "unruly horse." It is more appropriate to address arguments based on public interest and public policy to a legislature where such policies are given legal expression. Our task as we conceive it in the present case, is merely to construe an agreement embodied in a lease, in which the lessor is the grantor, according to ordinary well-recognised rules of construction one of which is found stated in Smt. Bina Das Guptas case, AIR 1968 SC 39  do not think that it had really so used it although it had considered the conduct of the defendants in accepting rent on the basis that it was a 90 years lease on a rent of Rs. 365/- per year until after 1955, without mentioning a right of enhancement of rent in the deed of 1955 to be circumstances indicating that the defendants themselves had put an interpretation upon the original lease which the Division Bench accepted as correct by finding out the meaning of the deed of 1931 first. We have not found it necessary to rely upon anything in the agreement of 27-5-55 either for interpreting the terms of the lease of 17-9-31 or as an admission on any question or as providing a basis for an estoppel or as a circumstance supporting our view. As indicated above, we have reached our conclusion, quite apart from the contents of the subsequent agreement or the conduct of the parties, by intepreting the lease deed of 17-9-31 on its own language and terms. We think that, on the language of the lease itself, the interpretation adopted by us is the only one which could give effect and meaning to all its parts read as a whole.