CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Miscellaneous Petition No. 8783 of 1977. (Application for additional grounds etc.) In the matter of :Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 2478 of 1977 From the Judgment and Order dated 3-5-1977 of the Rajasthan High Court in S.B. Civil 2nd Appeal No. 403 of 1975. Badridas Sharma and S. R. Srivastava for the Petitioner. Dr. L. M. Singhvi, S. M. Jain, Dalveer Bhandari and S. K. Jain for the Respondents. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by BEG, C.J. The plaintiff landlord had purchased a shop by a sale deed dated 17th May, 1965, and then terminated the tenancy of the defendant-petitioner by a registered notice in July, 1965, coupled with a demand for arrears of rent. Upon the failure of defendant to comply with the notice to quit a suit was filed against the defendant-petitioner on 23rd November, 1965. During the pendency of that suit the Rajasthan Premises (Control of Rent & Eviction) Act, 1950, was made applicable by a notification dated 30th March, 1967, to Rajgarh town where, the shop is situated. The defendant petitioner had denied having executed any rent note in favour of Bhurdas, the predecessor-in-interest of the plaintiff landlord who had also notified the defendant petitioner of the sale in favour of the plaintiff by a registered notice dated 25th June, 1965, received by the defendant petitioner on 29th June, 1965. The defendant petitioner pleaded having taken the shop from another individual. Mahant Ram Ratan Das. In the course of litigation, the defendant-petitioner had asked for an issue to be framed on the, question whether there was legal necessity for the transfer in favour of the plaintiff. In other words, he had questioned, at that stage, the legality of transfer in favour of the plaintiff on the ground of. want of title in the plaintiff’s predecessor-in-interest and also on the ground that the sale deed was invalid. The High Court had, however, on a revision application preferred by the defendant-petitioner rejected the demand of the tenant for framing of an issue on the question whether there was legal necessity for the transaction. The ground for this rejection was that, as the defendant petitioner had obtained possession under a tenancy from Bhurdas, the predecessor-in-interest of the present landlord, Surajmal, the defendant petitioner Udai Chand, was estopped from questioning the title of his landlord by reason of the principle laid down in Section 116 of the Evidence Act. Ultimately, upon the decree for eviction, the defendantpetitioner had again challenged the view that he Was estopped from questioning the title of Bhurdas. On this question the learned judge who heard the second appeal in the High Court observed
"I would like to mention here that the
learned- Counsel for the appellant did not
challenge the correctness of the finding that
the rent notes Ex. 8 and Ex. 10 were executed
by the defendant in favour of Bhurdas. The
learned Counsel for the appellant also did not
challenge the genuineness of the sale deed
dated May 17, 1965 executed by Bhurdas in
favour of Surajmal". The High Court then quoted the recitals of Ex. 10 showing that the defendant had admitted that the shop was owned by Bhurdas to whom he would pay rent. The defendantpetitioner’s second appeal was, therefore, dismissed by the High Court. The defendant-petitioner then filed a special leave petition in this Court under Article 136. Ground No. 7 of the grounds of special leave petition was :
"That the Hon’ble Court should have
appreciated that the rent note Ext. 10 nowhere
states that Bhoordas was the owner of the
house and hence the inference of the Hon’ble
Judge that the petitioner had admitted that
Bhoordas was the owner of the shop, is not
correct and hence the judgment under appeal
deserves to be set aside". On 17th May, 1977, the learned Vacation Judge granted special leave to appeal to this Court and also an ex-parte order staying dispossession pending disposal of a notice of motion. The respondent’s application for revocation of special leave to appeal is now before us. The respondents have filed a true copy of the rent deed Ex. 10. A perusal of it shows that there was a specific mention of Bhurdas as the owner of the shop in dispute which, the defendant petitioner had taken on rent. Hence, there could be no getting away from the fact that the defendant petitioner had made a clearly false and misleading assertion in his special leave petition. We fail to see what point other than the applicability of Section 116 of the Evidence Act could possibly arise in the case. The whole case was concluded by findings of fact. Nevertheless, the special leave petition was granted in this Court. We think that the only reason why such leave could have been granted was that it was misrepresented to the Court that the rent note in favour of Bhurdas did not contain an admission of the ownership of Bhurdas. This was certainly a misstatement of a material fact which was of decisive importance in the case. In fact, it was a serious misrepresentation on the only point which could possibly arise in the case. We have heard learned counsel for both sides. Learned Counsel for the, defendant petitioner is unable to give any explanation for the false assertion in ground No. VII of his special leave petition except that the learned Counsel had himself misunderstood the ’document, because of other facts, in the case. We are unable to accept this flimsy explanation as a sufficient justification for the false assertion. Reference was made by the learned Counsel for the respondents to The King v. Williams & Ors.(1), and The King v. The General Commissioners for the Purposes of the Income Tax Acts for the District of Kensington (2) which are cases of misleading assertions by petitioners made in affidavits to support grounds for writ petitions. He also cited Asiatic Engineering Co. v. A chru Ram & Ors. (3), on principles governing refusal of relief on writ petitions due to misrepresentation or suppression of material facts. More relevant is : Hari Narain v. Badri Day(4),where Gajendragadkar, J., speaking for this Court said (at p. 209):
"In dealing with applications for special
leave, the Court naturally takes statements
of fact and grounds of fact contained in th e
petitions at their face value and it would be
unfair to betray the confidence of the Court
by making statements which are untrue and
misleading,’. In that case, this Court revoked the grant of special leave despite the fact that Mr. Setalvad, who had argued the special leave petition at the time of its grant, had stated that, so far as he recollected, the special leave was not granted on the ground on which misrepresentation by his client had taken place. The last mentioned case was cited with approval in Rajabhai Abdul Rehman Munshi v. Vasudev Dhanjibhai Mody(5), where Sarkar and Shah.JJ. pointed out (at p. 488) :
"Exercise of the jurisdiction of the Court
under Art. 136 of the Constitution is
discretionary, it is exercised sparingly and
in exceptional cases, when a substantial
question of law fans to be determined or where
it appears to the Court that interference by
this Court is necessary to remedy serious
injustice. A party who approaches this Court
invoking the exercise of this overriding
discretion of the Court must come with clean
hands. If there appears on his part any
attempt to overreach or mislead the Court by
false or untrue statements or by withholding
true information which would have a bearing on
the question of exercise of the discretion,
’the Court would be justified in refusing to
exercise the discretion( or if the discretion
has been exercised in revoking the leave to
appeal granted even at the time of hearing of
the appeal". And, Hidayatullah J., said (at p. 493-494) there
"The powers exercisable by this Court under
Art. 136 of the Constitution are not in the
nature of a general appeal. They enable this
Court to interfere in cases where an
irreparable (1) [1914] 1 K.B. 608. (2) [1917] 1 K.B. 486. (3) A.I.R. 1951 All 746 (4) [1964] 2 S.C.R.203 at 209. (5) [1964] 3 S.C.R. 481 at 488 and 493.
injury has been caused by reason of a
miscarriage of justice due to a gross neglect
of law or procedure or otherwise and there is
no other adequate remedy. The article is
hardly meant to afford relief in a case of
this type where a party is in default of ren t
because he withdrew a deposit lying in court
but who cannot, on the record of the case, be
shown to have withdrawn the amount. If the
petition had mentioned that the decision of
the appeal court had proceeded on the ground
that the amount was taken out, it is difficult
to imagine that this Court would have given
special leave to decide a question of
discretion". We are constrained to observe that the tendency to file appeals in hopeless cases only to gain time and ward off eviction has assumed alarming proportions. We cannot mitigate possible rigours of any law by permitting defaulting tenants to hold up their evictions indefinitely or for inordinately long periods on flimsy or unsustainable grounds. We cannot permit abuses of the process of law and of law Courts. Accordingly, we allow this application for revocation of special leave. We hereby revoke the special leave granted and reject the special leave petition. We also vacate the stay granted. The application for urging additional grounds is rejected. The plaintiff-respondent will get special costs. S.R.
Petition allowed.