A decree of a civil court finding that the petitioners were in unauthorized occupation of the land in dispute would operate as res judicata in the proceedings under the Act so as to disentitle the petitioners to set up such a plea.

( 1 ) BY this petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners, who claim to have been in possession of the land in dispute for over 20 years as tenants under the Delhi Development Authority and its predecessor-in-office, the Delhi Improvement Trust, assail the proceedings taken under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act. 1971, hereinafter referred to as "the Act", against the petitioners as indeed the order made in it by the Estate Officer, directing the eviction of the petitioners and of the Additional District Judge upholding the said order in appeal.

( 2 ) THE proceedings and the impugned orders are assailed on the grounds that the notice issued to the petitioners under Section 4 (I) of the Act of show- cause why the petitioners be not evicted does not conform to the statutory requirements of Section 4 (1) of the Act and the petitioners were denied a reasonable opportunity of being heard in that the Estate Officer declined to make the aid of his process available to the petitioner for the production of Official records and certain public servants to establish the petitioner s contention that they had been in occupation of the land in dispute as tenants under the then Delhi Improvement Trust.

( 3 ) IT appears to me after hearing learned counsel for the parties that while both the grounds on which the proceedings are assailed are well founded, the petitioners are nevertheless not entitled, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, to any relief.

( 4 ) SECTION 4 (1) of the Act provides that a notice under that provision requiring the respondent to show cause why he should not be evicted should be for a date which is not earlier than 10 days from the date of its issue. The notices in the present case are admittedly undated and parties are agreed before me that there is no indication from the file as to when they were issued although the record shows that the direction for their issue was made on July 12, 1972. It is. however, a common case of the parties that these were received by the petitioners on September 16, 1972 and, therefore, in the ordinary course of events may have been issued a couple of days earlier. It could not. therefore, be said that the notices were issued not less than 10 days before the date on which the matter was scheduled to come up for hearing. The notices, therefore, were obviously not in conformity with the statutory requirement.

( 5 ) AS for the other ground it was not disputed before me that the petitioners had set up before the Estate Officer a case that they were not in unauthorised occupation of the land in dispute because they were in possession of it since over 20 years as tenants and had been paying rent to the appropriate authorities. The petitioners sought process of the Estate Officer to summon the records of the relevant authorities but the same was declined with the observation that the petitioners should make their own arrangements to produce public servants concerned with the relevant records. Obviously, the petitioners were not in a position to compel the public servants to appear before any authority much less with official records and such a course would have been possible only with the assistance of the process of the Estate Officer, who had been amply authorised in that behalf. The refusal, therefore, of the Estate Officer to summon the records and the official concerned clearly amounted to a denial of a reasonable opportunity of being heard and could not possibly be defended on behalf of the respondents.

( 6 ) EVEN so. the petitioners would not be entitled to the relief sought by them. The non-compliance of the provisions of Section 4 (1) of the Act would not vitiate the proceedings because the provisions of Section 4 do not appear to me to be mandatory but are only directory in nature intended to ensure that a person proposed to be evicted has a reasonable notice of the date of hearing and sufficient time to fi