Sant Ram v. Rajinder Lal and Ors.

Judgment

The Judgment of the Court was delivered by KRISHNA IYER, J .. A small event may mark a great portent as this tiny proceeding for eviction, from a mini-shop, of a little man, will prese'ntly disclose. The appellant, a harijan by birth and a cobbler by vocation, was a petty tenant of the eastern half of a shop in Ram Bazar, Simla. The original landlord passed away and his sons, the respondents, stepped into his shoes as legal representatives. He filed a petition for eviction of the appellant-tenant under S.13(2) (ii) (b) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949, as applied to Himachal Pradesh on the ground that the premises were being used for a purpose other than the one for which they were let out. The Rent Controller having held in 5-699SCI 178 [1979] l s.c.R. favour of the land-lord, an eviction order ensued. The appellate authority reversed this fi.."lding and dismissed the petition for eviction.

The High Court, in revision, reversed tho:: appellate decision and restored the Rent Contro:ler's order. The cobbler-appellant, in the last lap of litigation, has landed in this Court. The poverty of the appd- Iant is reflected in the chequered career of the case in this Court where it was dismissed more than once for default i'n payment hut ultimately, thanks to the persiste-.ace of the appellant, he got this Court's order to pay the balance amount extended. He complied with that direction and thus could not be prio"d out of the justice market, if we may use that expression. The short point for adjudication is as to whether the respondent land-lord made ont the statutory ground for eviction, of having diverted the building for a use radically ditlerent from tho~ one for which it was let, without his ccrasent. There is no case of written consent put forward by the tenant.

But he contested the land-lord's claim by asserting that there was no specific commercial purpose inscribed i'n the demise and, therefore, it was not poosible to postulate a diversion of purpose. Secondly, he urged that, even assuming that the letting was for a commercial purpose, the fact that he had cooked his food or stayed at night in the rear portion of !he small shop did not offead against S. 13(2) (ii) (b) of the Act. S.13(2) (ii) (b) reads: "used the bui<ding . . . . for a purpose other than that for Which it was loosed" The factual matrix may be shortly projected; for as Mr. Justice Cardozo luminously stated. "More and more we lawyers are awaking to a perception of the truth that what divides and distracts ns in the solution of a legal problem is not so much uncertainty about the law as uncertainty about the facts-the facts which generate the law. L~t the facts be k'1own as they are, and the law will sprout from the seed and turn its branches toward the light."(')

A cobbler-the appellant-was the lessee of a portion of a shop in Ram Bazar, Simla, since 1963, on an annual rent of Rs. 300/- (i.e. Rs. 25/- per month). Ex. P. 1, the lease deed, disclosed no purpose; but inferentially it has been held by the High Court that the lease being of a shop the purpose must have been commercial. Possible; ~10t (1) Benjamin Nathan Cardozo "What Mctficine can do for Law" address befor the New York Academy of Medicine Nov. l, 1928-Readings in Law and Psychiatry. r SANT RAM v. RAJJNDER LAL (Krishna Iyer, J.) necessarily sure. The actual life-situations and urban conditions of India, especially where poor tradesmen like cobblers, candle-stick makers, cycle repairers and tanduri bakers, take out small spaces oh rent, do not warrant an irresistible inference that if the lease is of a shop the purpose of the lease must be commercial.

It is comma::t know;edge that in the small towns-why, even in the big cities-little men plying little crafts and possessing little resources take on lease little work places to trade ahd to live, the two being interlaced for the lower, larger bracket of Indian humanity. You struggle to make a small income and work late into the night from early in the mom and, during intervals, rest your bones in the same place, drawing down the shutters of the shop for a while. The primary purpose is to ply a petty trade, the secondary but necessary incideht ii; to sleep in the same place since you can hardly afford anythihg but a pavement for the creature needs of cooking food, washing yourself, sleeping for a time and the like. The life style of the people shapes the profile of the law and not vice-versa. Law, not being an abstraction but a pragmatic exercise, the legal inference to be drawn from a lease deed is conditional by the prevailing circumstahces.

The intention of parties from which we 1>pell out the purpose of the lease is to be garnered from the social milieu. Tlius viewed, it is difficult to bold, especially when the lease has not spelt it out precisely, that the purpose was exclusively commercial and incompatible with any residential use, even of a portio:i. Two rules must be remembered while interpreting deeds and statutes. The first one is : "In drafting it is not enough to gain a degree of precisioh which a person reading in good faith can U':Jderstand, but it is necessary to attain if possible to a degree of precision which a person reading in bad faith cannot misunderstand."(') The second ooe is more important for the Third World countries. Statutory construction, so long as law is at the service of lire, cahnot be divorced from the social setting. That is why, welfare legislation like the one with which we are now concerned, must be interpreted in a Third World perspective.

We are not on the Fifth Avenue or Westend of London. We are i:i a hilly region of an Ihdian town with indigents struggling to live and huddling for want of accommodation. The law itself is intended to protect tenants from unreasonable eviction and is, therefore, worded a little in favour of that class of beneficiaries. When interpreting the text of such provisions-and thii; holds good in reading I) L·n G!ntium Lex-Then and Now 1799, p. 7. [1979 j I s.c.R. the meaning of documents regulating the r"lations between the weaker and the stronger contracting parties-we m·1st remember what is an earlier decision of this Court, has beeh obsen,,,d : C) "Where doubts arise the Gandhia;~ talisman becomes a tool of interpretation; "Wh.,,never yon are in doubt .... apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step yon con~"mplate is going to be of a·ny use to him."

If we remember these two rules, the conclusion is easy that there is no exclusiveness of purpose that can be sp,lt out of the lease deed. That knocks at the bottom of the case of the Ja·~.d-lord. The circumstances are clearer as wo proceed further. For \Wll over a decade the tenant have been in occupation, cobbling and sleeping, in the same place on working days, but going home on days when the shop is closed. Indeed, the pathetic genesis of the residential user ca-:mot be lost sight of. The cobbler's wife became mentally deranged and he could not leave her at hom" lest she should prove a danger to herself and to others around. Being a harijan cobbler he could not hire servants and so, in despair, he took his insane wife to the pbce whore he was toiling on leather. He worked in the shop, cooked food for his wife, slept there at night and thus managed to survive although she died.a little later.

"A bed by night a:ad i chest of drawers by day" is not nnnsnal even in England, as those who have read Goldsmith know. Th•" dual uses of accommodation are common ehongh and, in this case, the land-lord himself appears to have understood it that way .. The evidence shows that the sympathetic father of the respondents had not objected to the petitimer living in the premises and had even provided a sink in tile shop to facilitate such user. Not that oral permission to divert the user to a different purpose is sufficient i'n the face of the statutory requirement of written consent but that circumstance of the land-lord's acquiescence over a long stretch of time reinforces the case of the tenant tllat the purpose was two-fold. The common experie':lce of life lends credence to tllis case and none but those who live in ivory towers can refuse to look at the raw realities of life while administering justice. We are in the field of Poverty Jurisprudence.

It is impossible to hold tllat if a tenant who takes out petty premises for carrying on a small trade also stays in tile rear portion, cooks and eats, he so disastrously perverts the purpose of the lease. A different 'purpose' in tile context is not minor variations but majnscule i':1 mode of enjoyment. This is not a case of a man switching over to a (1) Moti Ram & Ors. v. State of M. P., [1979] I SCR 335. SANT RAM v. RAJINDER LAL (Krishna Iyer, J.) canteen business or closing down the cobbler shop and converting the place bto a resid•ontial accommodation. On the other ha'nd, the common case is that the cobbler continued to be cobbler and stayed in the shop at night on days when he was running his shop but left for his home on shop holidays. A sense of proportion in social assessme'nt is of the judicial essence. The irresistible inference, despite the i':1genious argument to the contrary, is that the provision of S.13(2) (ii) has not been attracted.

We aro comforted in the thought that our conclusion is a realistic one, as is apparent from a subsequent amendment to the definition of 'nonresidential buildi·:ig which reads thus : " ( d) "non-residential building" means a building being U5ed,- (i) mainly for the purpo&~ of business or trade; or (ii) partly for the purpose of business or trade a'nd partly for the purpose of residence, subject to th·~ condition that the person who carries on business or trade in the building resides there; Provided that if a building is let out for residential and non-residential purpose separately to more than one porso·n, the portion thereof let out. for the purpose of residence shall not be treated as a non-re.idential building. Explanation.-Whcre a building is used mai-:tly for the purpose of business or trade, it shall be deemed to be a non-residential building even though a small portion thereof is used for the purpose of residence."

Shri Bhatt raised an argume'nt that this provision was applicable to pending proceedings. We do not have to investigate bto that question in the view we have already taken and note the amendment only to indicate that the legislature, in its realism, has veered round expressly to approve de jure what is the de facto situation prevailing in the · urba':l areas of Himachal Pradesh. In this view, the appeal is allowed with costs. The tenant shall not be ejected. If he has been, as in this case it is stated he has been, the tenant shall be restituted into possession by the trial court under S. 144, C.P.C. within one month ignoring the fact that some other tenant is inducted by the landlord. S.R. Appeal allowed.