JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J.:—The Holmesian homily that the life of the law is not logic but experience directs our humane attention, in this appeal against an order in execution for eviction of an advocate in Chandigarh, affirmed by court after court to a reading of the textual definition of tenant (S.2 (i)) in the context of the broad embargo on ejectment of urban dwellings in S. 13 of the East Punjab Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (hereinafter referred to as the Act).

2. Chandigarh, a blossom in the desert, has served as the capital of two States; and, with explosive expansion, thanks to the marvellous human resources of Punjab and Haryana, become a crowded, though not yet chaotic, city with chronic accommodation scarcity. Consequently, laissez faire law, in the matter of landlords right to evict his tenant, was subject to the Act with effect from 4-11-1972. From then on, no tenant could be dispossessed except on the grounds set out in S. 13. But if a landlord had already obtained a decree for eviction earlier to this date line, was he to be restrained by S. 13 which forbade even execution of decrees against tenants, or was he free from the statutory fetters because the defendant had ceased to be a tenant on the passing of the decree, having forfeited his status by the destructive effect of a compromise, as in this case ?

3. An advocate, under this Act, belongs to a scheduled class of tenants whose dwellings enjoy special protection. The appellant-advocate tenanted a building belonging to the respondent. The latter sued for possession and the former, with refreshing realism, entered into a compromise and agreed to vacate by a certain date on certain terms regarding rent which do not bear upon the dispute before us. A decree in terms thereof was passed on 9-10-1972. Then came the Act, which by extension of its operation, applied to Chandigarh with effect from 4-11-1972. Had the decree been passed but a few days later, the Act would have admittedly interdicted the eviction because of S. 13. Had the decree been made and executed a day before the extension of the Act, the years of litigative procrastination of eviction might have been impossible. These mystic might-have-beens are gambles of time which spill beyond our jurisdiction and statutory cognisance. The salvation of the appellant is certain if he be a tenant within the meaning of the Act. His eviction is certain if the definition of tenant does not ensconce him in its amplitude.

4. Decisions of peripheral relevance, but of different kernel, have been cited on both sides, and the one which has tilted the scales in the Chandigarh jurisdiction in favour of decree-holder-landlord in Subudhis case (1968) 2 SCR 559. Precedents are laws device to hold the present prisoner of the past and must bind only if squarely covered. Subudhis case decided under the Orissa House Rent Control Act, 1958, is not one such. The key word is tenant and if under the Act the appellant fills the bill, definitionally he is immune from eviction when read with S. 13. Subudhi (supra) turns on a significantly different definition which cuts down the wide connotation by a tail-end qualification. The semantic sweep of S. 2 (i) in our Act, by clear contrast, takes in a wider group and we have no indication in that judgment whether a provision like S. 13 which makes the restriction applicable also to decrees was present in the Act there debated. Therefore, we side-step those rulings and go straight to the two provisions and their meaning in the statutory setting.

5. It is too platitudinous to preach and too entrenched to shake, the proposition that rent control legislation in a country of terrible accommodation shortage is a beneficial measure whose construction must be liberal enough to fulfil the statutory purpose and not frustrate it. So construed, the benefit of interpretative doubt belongs to the potential evictee unless the language is plain and provides for eviction. That intendment must, by interpretation, be e