ORAL JUDGMENT :- All these revisions can be disposed of by a common judgment, since they involve same question of law and facts.

2. The lower Court by its common judgment set aside the order of assessment passed by the Additional Deputy Municipal Commissioner, whereby he modified the previous assessment. The Municipal Corporation has, therefore, filed these revisions.

3. The respondents own and run Mangal Karyalaya i.e. marriage halls.

These marriage halls are made available to public for the purpose of marriages and other functions on payment of certain charges. All these halls were assessed to payment of property tax, leviable under section 115-A of the City of Nagpur Corporation Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as 'Act'). A notice dated 19-61998 was issued to the owners of the marriage halls, informing them about the fresh assessment and the tax proposed to be imposed w .e. f. 1-10-1997. All respondents raised an objection under section 128 of the Act. The objections were overruled and the tax proposed was levied. Being aggrieved by that order, appeals under section 130 of the Act were preferred before the District Court, Nagpur. The learned judge of the lower Court, relying upon the decision of the Supreme Court in 1994(6) SCC 572 held that the Corporation was bound to make assessment and levy taxes on the basis of fair rent alone. He held that the Corporation i.e. the petitioner could not legally determine the annual letting value on the basis of particular percentage of the charges payable per day of their use and multiplying this percentage by a certain number of days booking. Observing so, he set aside this method of assessment and directed that the assessment of property tax be made on basis of fair rent as laid down in the Belgaon Municipal Corporation case, referred to above.

4. I have heard the learned counsel for the revision-petitioners and the respondents. Section 115-A of the Act defines what taxes are included in the property tax section further says that the property tax shall be imposed on the buildings and the lands.

5. The building in question is not a residential building. The marriage halls are not let out on either monthly rent or yearly rent. They are allowed to be made use of on payment of certain charges which are bound to differ from event to event and even customer to customer and also on the basis of the period or days of occupation. The charges may differ during some parts of the month and some part of the year. They could be much less when there could be no season of marriage. There could, therefore, be no fixed charges per day also. It may so happen that the owner may charge less to certain people or categories of people and occupancy charges may differ on number of days occupation i.e. if it is used for a day, the charges may be higher and if it is proposed to be used for a week or more, charges could lower. It is also a matter of common knowledge that there could be occupancy for certain season in a year and not year rounded. The halls may remain vacant for number of days which may also differ from hall to hall and locality to locality.

6. It is to be seen that the marriage hall is never let out on monthly or yearly basis, nor exclusive possession of the hall is handed over to customer. There could, therefore, be no relationship of landlord and tenant between the owner of the hall and the person making temporary use of the hall. The person making use also does not strictly fall in the definition of licensee as given in the Maharashtra Rent Control Act, 1999. The definition of licence in the Maharashtra Rent Act reads thus -

(5) "Licensee", in respect of any premises or any part thereof, means the person who is in occupation of the premises or such part, as the case may be, under a subsisting agreement for licence given for a licence fee or charge; and includes any person in such occupation of any premises or part thereof in a building vesting in or leased to a co-operative Societies Act, 19

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