IMPORTANT POINT
Concurrent-finding of fact of Courts-below can not be dealt and supplanted by a different finding arrived at on an independent re-assessment of evidence by High Court in exercise of its revisional jurisdiction.

JUDGMENT

Tarun Chatterjee,J.

1. Leave granted.

2. We are invited in this appeal to decide whether the High Court was justified, in the facts and circumstances of the present case in its revisional jurisdiction, in re-appreciating the facts and setting aside the order of the Rent Controller, Vijayawada dated 31st of October, 2001 and the order of the Appellate Authority, Vijayawada dated 21st of December, 2005.

3. In our view, the High Court was not justified in interfering with the concurrent findings of fact arrived at by the Courts below.

4. The appellant is a tenant in respect of the premises in question since 1982. In or about the year 2000, the landlady/respondent herein filed an application for eviction of the tenant/appellant under Section 10(3)(a)(i)(a) read with Section 10(2)(i) of A.P. Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1960 (in short, “the Act”) before the Rent Controller on the ground that the landlady/respondent bonafide required the premises in question and also the tenant/appellant was a willful defaulter in payment of rent.

5. Parties adduced evidence and finally, the Rent Controller, Vijayawada, by its final order dated 31st of October, 2001, rejected the eviction petition inter alia holding that the landlady/respondent had failed to prove that the tenant/appellant was a defaulter in payment of rent and in so far as the bonafide need of the premises in question was concerned, it was held that the landlady/respondent had two houses at Hyderabad and the landlady was residing in Vijayawada with her family members consisting of one son and two daughters for the last 31 years.

6. Feeling aggrieved, an appeal was carried to the Appellate Authority, namely, Principal Senior Civil Judge-cum-Appellate Authority, Vijayawada. The Appellate Authority also affirmed the findings of the Rent Controller, Vijayawada and dismissed the appeal. A Civil Revision Petition was then filed in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh at Hyderabad by the landlady/respondent against the aforesaid concurrent orders of rejection of the eviction petition and by the impugned order, the High Court had set aside the concurrent orders of rejection and directed the eviction of the tenant/appellant.

7. Feeling aggrieved by the impugned order of the High Court, this Special Leave Petition has been filed at the instance of the tenant/appellant, which on grant of leave, was heard in presence of the learned counsel for the parties.

8. So far as the ground of willful default was concerned, both the Rent Controller as well as the Appellate Authority held that there was no willful default in payment of rent for the months of December, 1998 and January, 1999. So far as this ground was concerned, the High Court also observed that the learned counsel for the landlady/respondent, not having urged the said ground i.e. willful default in payment of rent, the findings of the two Courts below must be affirmed. So far as the case of bonafide requirement of the landlady/respondent was concerned, the High Court has, by the impugned order, set aside the concurrent findings of fact arrived at by the Courts below.

9. In our view, the High Court was not justified in the present case to interfere with the concurrent orders of the Courts below rejecting the plea of bonafide requirement of the landlady/respondent. The only ground on which the High Court had set aside the concurrent orders of the Courts below is that since the husband of the landlady had retired from service in 1982 and was residing at Hyderabad and she was not having any other residential house at Vijayawada where she was planning to settle, it must be held that the requirement was bonafide.

10. In Paragraph 16 of the impugned Judgment, the High Court has given the reasons for setting aside the concurrent orders of rejection of the eviction petition. We feel it proper in this case to reproduce the said part of the impugned order, which runs asunder :-

“16. The evidence of P.W. 1 would go to show t