Judgment

NATARAJAN, J. :- Leave granted.

This appeal by special leave has been preferred by a landlord and is directed against the judgment and order of the Allahabad High Court in Civil Miscellaneous Writ Petition No. 7343 of 1982. The appellant succeeded in obtaining a decree for eviction against the respondents before the trial Court and the Revisional Court but the decree was quashed by the High Court in the writ petition filed by the respondents herein and hence the present appeal by the landlord appellant.

2. The suit for eviction on the ground of arrears of rent was filed by the appellant on 11-9-1973 after the coming into force of the U.P. Urban Buildings (Regulation of Letting, Rent and Eviction) Act, 1972 (for short the Act.) In the plaint it was averred that the Act would not apply to the lease of the demised premises viz. a shop because the shop had been constructed only in the year 1966, and as such, the shop was exempted from the purview of the Act for a period of ten years as provided for in S. 2(2) of the Act. The respondents raised various defences to the action but we are now concerned only with the tenability of one of those defences viz. that the shop was covered b