JUDGMENT :

I. Introduction:

The owners want to recover leased property: a piece of vacant land. They file a suit for ejectment on various grounds. All the way up to High Court, they lose the suit. After the unsuccessful first round litigation, within three months—but twenty years after their first suit—the owners issue a quit notice and, again, file the second ejectment suit. Among the many grounds, the principal are rent default and bona fide requirement.

2. The trial Court decrees the suit. The tenant and the subtenant file two appeals; both dismissed, they file Civil Revision Applications. In these CRAs they raise the following issues:

(a) The tenants do admit there accumulated certain rent arrears when the first-round eviction proceedings were pending. But does their recovery in the second suit stand barred by res judicata and Section 12 of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 (“the Bombay Rent Act”)?

(b) Can the revisional Court reappreciate evidence on the rent default and bona fide requirement?

(c) The State Government has, pending the appeal, ba