A co-owner of a property can maintain an eviction suit on the ground of personal requirement if he is the landlord of the tenant.

( 1 ) MST. Zubeda Begum is the widow of K. B. Mirza Hamid Ali Khan. On 13-2-1968, she brought a petition for the ejectment of her tenant Khurshid Haider. She also joined the sub-tenants, Mushayab Hussain and Mehtab Hussain. She claimed ejectment on two grounds. One was that the tenant had sublet, assigned or othetwise parted with the possession of the ground floor without her coirsent or her predecessor s consent in writing. The second ground was that she required the premises bone fide for residence for herself and the members of her family dependent on her. She alieged that she was living in a rented premises which were insufficient for her requirements. ,

( 2 ) THE rent Controller Mrs. S. Duggal by order dated 25. 3. 71 passed an order of eviction on the ground of bonafide requirement. The ground of sub etting was decided against her. Against order of eviction tenant appealed. The Rent Control Tribunal by order of 11. 10. 72 dismissed the appeal. The tenant has now brought this second appeal under S. 39 of the Delhi Rent Control Act 1958 (the Act ).

( 3 ) MR. R. L. Tandon on behalf of the tenant has taken a large number of grounds With regard to all of them it will be proper to observe at the very out set that they are largely grounds of fact in regard to which judgment of the authorities below has become final. An appeal to this court u/s 39 of the Act lies only on "a substantial question of law". In one of the grounds urged before me Mr. Tandon has not been able to show that any substantiai question of law is involved.

( 4 ) FIRST and foremost, counsel for the tenant argued that landlady did not appear in the witness box herself and therefore it cannot be said that she has proved her case of bonafide requirement. Basing himself on Virendra Pai v. Daljit Singh 1978 (1) R. C. J. 365 counsel said that the best person to prove bone fide requirement was the landlady herself and if she did not appear in court an adverse inference should be drawn against her that she was not willing to pledge her word in support of the case that she required the premises bona fide for her residence.

( 5 ) IT is true that the landlady did not appear personally to testify on her own behalf but her attorney Shri Narain Dass Pancholi, A. W. 1 appeared and deposed that the landlady required the premises bone fide for herself and for the members of the family dependent on her. Now the landlady has six children and on 13. 1. 69 when the attorney made the statement their ages were 20, 16, 14, 12, 10. and 9. The important point to note is that Narain Dass was not at all cross-examined as regards the bone fide requirement of the landlady. The members of her family were not disputed by the tenant nor did he contest that the landlady was residing in a rented house All that was contended was, she had 4 room and not two as was alleged by her. The tenantproduced two witnesses who said that the landlady had four rooms in her occupation. Their evidence did not impress the authorities below. Both the controller and the tribunal found that the accommodation with the landlady was insufficient and that she required the premises bona fide for herself and her children. Relying on the statement of the attorney and disbelieving the evidence of the tenant s witnesses the tribunal held that the landlady was in occupation of only two rooms and a store and this accommodation was wholly insufficient for a family of six children and their mother. .

( 6 ) I want to say a word about the ruling in Virendra Pal. It was an undefended case. Moreover it does not lay dow any rule of law. if facts of one case are widely different from facts of another case and to attempt to extract from it any legal principle of general application is to ignore the evertimely warning of Lord Wright in Tidv V. Battman. (1934) 1 K. B. 319

"it is unfortunate that questions which are questions of fact alone should be confused by importing into them as principles of law a course of reasoning whic