Judgment

V.N. Khare, J.-Since common question of fact and law are involved in these civil appeals and as such they were being disposed of by a common judgment.

2. In all these appeals the appellant are the tenants and the respond­ent is the landlady. The respondent herein owns a premises in the city of Chandigarh. There were four separate tenements in the said build­ing, two of which are occupied by the two appellants herein. In the 1975, the husband of respondent landlady who was a government servant retired from service and on 5.1.85 he died. The State Legislature of Punjab amended the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Act’). By the aforesaid amendment a new Section 13A was added in the Act. The aforesaid Section 13A reads as under :

“13A. Right to recover immediate possession of residential or scheduled building to accrue to certain persons where a specified landlord at any time, within one year prior to or within one year after the date of his retirement or after his retirement but within one year of the date of commencement of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1985, whichever is later, applies to the Controller along with a certificate from the authority competent to remove him from service indication the date of his retirement and his affidavit to the effect that he does not own and possess any other suitable accommodation in the local area in which he intends to reside to recover possession of his residential building or scheduled build­ing, as the case may be, for his own occupation, there shall accrue, on and from the date of such application to such specified landlord, notwithstanding anything contained elsewhere in this Act or in any other law for the time being in force or in any contract (whether expressed or implied), custom or usage to the contrary, a right to recover immediately the possession of such resi­dential building or scheduled building or any part or parts of such building if it is let out in part or parts.”

3. By Notification dated 15.12.1986 Section 13A was extended to the Union Territory of Chandigarh. After this provision was extended to the Union Territory of Chandigarh the respondent landlady filed four separate applications before the Rent Control Officer, Chandigarh seeking eviction of the tenants under Section 13A of the Act. By an order dated 27th January, 1989 the Rent Controller passed an order of eviction against one of the tenants, namely, Dr. (Mrs.) S.K. Gill and subsequently on 15.3.89 the Rent Controller also passed an order of eviction against another tenant Bhupinder Singh Dr. (Mrs.) S.K. Gill and Shri Bhupinder Singh preferred two separate revisions before the High Court against the orders of the Rent Controller directing for their ejectment. The High Court took the view that under the second proviso to Section 13A the landlord is entitled to recover possession of only one portion of the building and other tenants cannot be evict­ed. Accordingly the landlady was given an option to choose any one of the four tenants for eviction. Accordingly the revision was allowed. Consequent upon the order of the High Court the landlady gave her choice for eviction of Dr. (Mrs.) S.K. Gill and therefore she was evicted from that portion of the building which she was occupying as a tenant. This is the first chapter of litigation.

4. On 20th December, 1989 the Rent Controller following the decision of the High Court rejected the applications of landlady seeking evic­tion against the present appellants, namely, S/Shri Surinder Sharma and P.K. Vasudeva. The landlady preferred two separate revisions before the High Court challenging the orders of the Rent Controller rejecting her applications for eviction of the aforesaid two tenants. When the matter came up before the learned Single Judge, he was of the view that the question which arose in the case required consideration by a Division Bench. Consequently the question was referred to a Di