JUDGMENT - B. LENTIN, J.:---In a deadlock between a landlord and the tenants, the Repaid Board, a statutory body, cannot be prevented from carrying out its statutory duty and obligation cast on it by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Act, 1976 to carry out repairs of building within its purview. Such is the ratio of this judgment.

2. Who shall carry out the repairs to the appellants' building ? Shall it be the landlord- appellants or the respondent-tenants or the Repaid Board ? Such is the gravamen on which this appeal filed by the landlords revolves.

3. Indisputably the building owned by the appellants is in a ruinous condition, constructed as it was nearly 70 years ago. It is situate in the busy Kalbadevi Locality. The building in its present condition is a danger to life and safety. Indisputably it requires immediate repairs. By consent of parties we took on record 28 photographs of the building produced by the appellant's learned Counsel Mr. Shroff. They have to be seen to guage the dilapidation and the immediate urgency of carrying out repairs on a war footing. If this building has so far not collapsed, it must be attributed to the inscrutable ways of providence.

4. There is a prior acrimonious history of litigation between the landlords and the tenants. The results has been a stalemate and the building in its precarious condition remains a danger to life and limb of the occupants and passers by.

5. The Repair Board thereupon took upon itself the task of repairing this building. To that end, the board took out a Notice of Motion on 27-4-1988 that it be allowed to carry out the repairs to this building. That motion was made absolute by the learned Single Judge. Hence, the present appeal by the landlords.

6. We are satisfied that the judicial discretion exercised by the learned Single Judge was correctly exercised in favour of the Repaid Board. Neither the tenants nor the landlords have faith in the other's desire to carry out the repairs. For that matter, despite the N.O.C. given by the Repair Board to the landlords to carry out the repairs 3 years ago, the landlords did nothing. Nor did various repair notices served by the Bombay Municipal Corporation on the landlords yield any result. The bona fides of the landlords do not appear to be beyond the pale of calculated indifference. If only the building were to collapse, what a gold-mine for the landlords. The constant reiteration by the landlords' learned Counsel Mr. Shroff that the landlords were and are anxious to carry out the repairs, as 40% of the building is occupied by them, finally resulted in an admission that the landlords themselves moved out of the building in 1982 and are residing elsewhere.

7. It is not the acrimonious past that need be dwelt on, but the present and immediate future, both of which redound with grave danger to human life and safety if the Board had allowed the stalemate to continue any longer.

8. Since the landlords and the occupants are at loggerheads as to who should carry out the repairs to this building, it is but fit and proper that the Repair Board itself should do it. In such a case, the Repair Board a statutory body, cannot be prevented from carrying out its statutory duty and obligation cast on it by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Act to carry out repair of buildings within its purview. To do so would stultify the very purpose for which the Board has been set up under the Act.

9. What also weighs in favour of the Repair Board is the statement made by its learned Counsel Mr. Chegle that it will not be necessary to require the tenants to vacate en masse as repairs will be carried out in stages. On the other hand, according to the landlords, all the tenants would be required to vacate en masse before repairs can be carried out. Manifestly much less inconvenience will be caused to the tenants by the expedient stated by Mr. Chegle.

10. We decline to be diverted by the technical objection faintly whispered by the appellants

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