Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. - Delhi, the home of Power and the nidus of paradoxes, presents many pathological problems to the students of history, social science, politics and law, often interacting with each other. We are here concerned with the socio-legal malady of accommodation scarcity and the syndrome of long queues of government employees waiting, not knowing for how long, for allotment of government quarters at moderate rents and the co-existence of several well-to-do officers enjoying, by virtue of their office, State-allowed residential accommodation while owning their own but letting them out at lucrative rents, making substantial incomes in the bargain. The law awoke to end this unhappy development and to help the helpless nonallottees get government accommodation. Such is the back-drop to Section 14A which, read along with Section 25B, of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 (Act LIX of 1958) (for short, the Act), falls for our consideration in the present appeal by special leave.

2. A deeper understanding of the need for the new provisions just mentioned and the construction that they bear in the context necessitates stating a little more in detail the social setting. The sea