The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of liberally construing the notice requirement under S.106 of the Transfer of Property Act in rent control proceedings to prevent eviction actions from being defeated due to minor errors or inaccuracies.

1. A tenant in a Rent Control proceedings is the petitioner before me. R.C.P. No. 56 of 1970 was filed against him seeking eviction on the ground of arrears of rent and bonafide need. The Rent Control court found bonafide need in favour of the respondent and ordered eviction which was confirmed by the appellate authority and the revisional court. This revision challenges the order passed by the District Judge, Ernakulam in R.C.R.P. No. 94 of 1976 directing the petitioner to surrender the building to the respondent.

2. Two important questions are raised by the counsel for the petitioner before me. The first question is that the court below committed an error of jurisdiction in so far as me petition for eviction was not preceded by a valid notice under S.106 of the Transfer of Property Act which according to him is a statutory mandatory requirement, to sustain an Application for eviction. The second point urged is that the bonafide need put forward by the respondent is not really bonafide and is falsified by various circumstances which he brought to my notice during his submissions at the Bar. I shall deal with these two questions separately.

3. Whether a notice under S.106 of the Transfer of Property Act is necessary or not is a question not free from doubt. But in this case the respondent's counsel conceded before me, for the purpose of this petition, that a notice under S.106 of the Transfer of Properly Act is necessary. According to him there is a notice in this case satisfying the requirements of that section.

4. The tenancy was created on 13-4-1956. The respondent issued a notice to the petitioner on 16 -12-69 Ext. A-1 is the copy of the notice so sent. The original is and should be with the petitioner. This is not produced. It is seen from Ext. A-1 that the petitioner was railed upon to surrender the property by the end of the month, January 1967. Ext. A-2 dated 26-12-1969 is the reply to the said notice. No objection was taken in Ext. A-2 about the insufficiency or the invalidity of the notice sent.

5. In the petition for eviction, it is clearly averred in Para.5, that a notice terminating the tenancy ending with January, 1970 was issued to the petitioner. This averment is of course controverted in the counter tiled by the petitioner that the notice sent terminating the tenancy is not valid in law. The question for consideration is whether the notice in question is a valid one. The date given in Ext. A-1 is clearly a mistake One does not know what is the date given in the original By a notice issued in 1969, the tenant cannot be called upon to surrender the property in January, 1967. This is impossible of performance. No argument is necessary to conclude that what was meant was that the tenant should surrender in January, 1970. It should be presumed that the tenant also understood it to be so. To defeat the claim of the landlord on the basis of this accidental error committed in Ext. A-1 will be to defeat justice and to make a mockery of law. However, the counsel for the petitioner would contend that S.106 of the Transfer of Property Act should be construed strictly. The mandate of the section is that there should be a valid notice. The benefit of any accidental error or a slipshod phraseology in the notice should go to the tenant. I can agree with the counsel for the petitioner that in certain circumstances errors in a notice can be taken advantage of by the tenant while invoking the benefit of S.106 of the Transfer of Property Act. But this case has to be construed on its own facts and if it is so construed I have absolutely no hesitation in holding that this mistake in Ext. A-1 cannot be made use of by the tenant to defeat the rightful claim of the landlord, if he is able to establish the claim for eviction.

6. The matter has been considered in various decisions and the decision reported in Tika Ram v. Sri Thakur (AIR. 1934 Allahabad 787), that or a Division flench, is on all fours with the facts of this case I