Present petition being on different facts under changed law not barred u/s 19.

JUDGMENT.— No doubt, Mr. Subramania Iyer has raised an interesting question, in his Civil Revision Petition, whether section 19 of the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1960, is applicable to the facts of this case. The respondent was a doctor. She was practising and she needed a clinic for her own use but she was residing in a rented premises. Therefore, she filed H.R.C. No. 4843 of 1963 in the Court of the Rent Controller seeking for eviction of the petitioner under section 10 (3) (a) (i) of the Act as it then stood. The respondent was not successful both before the Rent Controller as well as before the Appellate Authority.

2. The present petition (H.R.C. No. 1080 of 1973) has been filed by the respondent in 1973, about ten years later. Her case was thai she was unable to exercise her profession as a doctor and that she was unable to Continue in the rented premises along with her husband and children who are grown up and who find it very difficult to continue their occupation in the rented premises. She would also mention an additional factor that her son has become a doctor and that he is occupying the downstairs in the rented premises, which makes it impossible for her in her old age to live with her husband and the other members of the family in the upstairs. On this different state of affairs and facts, she filed the present petition ten years after she lost the earlier petition filed in 1963, in which she had asked the portion in the occupation of the petitioner for her own use and occupation.

3. The only contention raised by the petitioner-tenant both before the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority was a legal contention. That legal contention was that under section 19, any application filed under section 10, amongst others, shall be summarily rejected by the Authorised Officer or the Controller, as the case may be, if such application raises between the same parties substantially the same issues as having been finally decided or purported to have been finally decided in a former proceeding under the Act.

4. Both the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority held against the tenant. Hence the civil revision petition.

5. Mr. Subramania Iyer repeats the legal contention and urges that the earlier order made in 1963 would operate as a bar to the maintainability of the present petition for eviction. The argument, in the first instance, is undoubtedly attractive. But, as on the date when the earlier application was disposed of, the law was slightly different. It would enable a landlord or landlady to apply, in the case of a residential building, far eviction of the tenant if the landlord or his own independent occupation. The Authori-tion if he or she is not occupying a residential building of his or her own in the city, town or village. But, by an Explanation added by Tamil Nadu Act XXIII of 1973 (which was, indeed, the result of the decisions of this Court), the alteration made to the section would enable a landlord or landlady to seek for such eviction not only for his or her own occupation, but also for the occupation of any member of his or her family, if he or she or any member of the family is not occupying a residential building of his or her own in the city, town or village. This change in law apparently prompted the respondent to come up with the present petition for eviction. Though, of course, this was not the main sheet-anchor of the respondent, yet, it appears to me that by reason of the change of law, certain vested rights which have come into existence for the first time could be availed of and taken advantage of by the landlord or landlady if he or she fits in with the facts and circumstances which he or she has to establish under the modified section.

6. I have already referred to the present petition in which the respondent, after referring to the growth of her family after the previous petition, stated that she being in a rented premises, needs her own premises in the occupation of t

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