The legislature has the power to enact laws that validate pending proceedings, even if those proceedings would otherwise be invalid. This power is not an encroachment on the judicial field, as it merely provides a legal fiction that the proceedings were validly continued, leaving it to the courts to decide the individual cases on their own facts.

( 1 ) THE judgment I render now governs two second appeals 67 and 68 of 1957 -- each by a tenant defendant arising out of actions in ejectment instituted in the Small Cause Court, Calcutta on December 22, 1954 concerning parts of 134/3a Cornwallis Street on the ground floor.

( 2 ) IN 67', the appellant is Prativa Pal who, it is said, was the tenant of a shop room on a rent of Rs. 35/-a month payable according to the English calendar month. In 68', the appellant is Prativa's father, Girish Chandra Ghosh, who, it is said, held the adjacent shop room in the same premises on the same terms as his daughter.

( 3 ) THE plaintiff in each of the two actions in ejectment is Janhabi Charan Chatterjee. Necessarily he is the sole respondent in each of the two appeals before me.

( 4 ) THE two suits for eviction -- one against the father and the other against the daughter -- were grounded on default in payment of rent from June 1953 to January 1954 -- a little more than three occasions of two months' rent within a period of eighteen months within the meaning of the proviso to Sub-section (3) of Section 14 of the West Bengal Premises Rent Control (Temporary Provisions) Act, 17 of 1950, hereinafter referred to as "the 1950 Act" which governs this litigation. More, the tenancies were determined too by services of notices to quit by the last hour of the last day of January, 1954.

( 5 ) THE suits were answered by more than one plea absence of default, invalidity and insufficiency of the notices, existence of one tenancy instead of two etc.

( 6 ) THE learned trial Judge negatived all the pleas and decreed the suits on April 6, 1956. In appeals taken against the decrees, the findings of the learned trial Judge an default and notice were not challenged. What was challenged was the finding on the existence of two tenancies instead of one. The learned appellate Judges held that "there were two tenancies at all relevant times" and dismissed the appeals on September 4, 1956.

( 7 ) THE defendants -- one in each suit -- have, there-fore, come up to this Court in second appeals.

( 8 ) MR. Sen appearing for the appellants reiterates the point about the existence of one tenancy and not two. But that is a matter which is concluded by the concurrent findings of fact come to by the Court of first instance and the first Court of appeal. I see no error of law which can be said to vitiate this finding. That apart, what error either of fact or of law can there be when the father and the daughter do away with the intervening wall for convenience sake? Only because they do so, their tenancies do not merge into one. I, therefore, see no substance in this point.

( 9 ) MR. Sen next contends that there is no relationship of landlord and tenant between Girish Chandra Ghosh, the appellant in 68' and Janhabi Charan Chatterjee, the respondent. The Indian Educational Stores Limited was the tenant, not Girish -- Mr. Sen concludes. This raises a mixed question of fact and law taken for the first time before me. Worse, it is nowhere to be found in the grounds of appeal. So Mr. Sen is not entitled to be heard even, on such a point.

( 10 ) ON merits too this contention cannot receive effect. The counterfoils, exhibit 1, show payment of rent by Girish. On top of that, his admission in cross-examination is that the tenancy was taken in his name, though it was occupied by the Indian Educational Stores Limited. If you allow the tenancy to run in your name, if you payment in your own name, it is idle to turn round and say: I am not the tenant, somebody else is. In the face of all this, one can hardly attach any importance to the rest of Janhabi's evidence to the effect that it was argued that the Indian Educational Stores Limited would take one room -- evidence upon which Mr. Sen so strongly relies. That might have been agreed to. But Girish took the lease in the long run as the evidence discussed above indicates. I, therefore reject this contention as w