The central legal point established in the judgment is the application of the principle of res judicata under Section 19 of the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act 1960, emphasizing the requisites for its application and the need for a prior decision on the same issues in the former proceeding.

ORDER:- This revision under the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act 1960, raises a point about res judicata in the following circumstances:

2. The petitioner is the owner of a non-residential building in Arni under the tenancy of the respondent. In the year 1973, the petitioner moved the Rent Controller for eviction of the tenant, inter alia, on the ground that he required the building for housing a business of his own. The Rent Controller dismissed that petition on the preliminary point that prior to filing the petition no notice to quit under S. 106 of the Transfer of Property Act had been issued to the tenant. In this view, the Rent Controller did not have to go into the merits of any of the grounds of eviction raised in the petition.

3. Two or three years later, the petitioner came out with another eviction petition before the Rent Controller against the same tenant on the self-same grounds. This time the Rent Controller went into the merits and granted an order of eviction, holding that the petitioner required the building bona fide for his own business.

4. The tenant appealed, contending that the present proceedings were barred by res judicata under S.19 of the Act. The appellate authority upheld the contention and dismissed the eviction petition on that ground, reversing the decision of the Rent Controller.

5. In this revision, the petitioner contends that Section 19 does not apply and the appellate authority acted wrongly in dismissing the present eviction petition on the ground of res judicata.

6. I uphold this contention as well-founded. Section 19 of the Act incorporates the principle of res judicata more or less on the same lines as in the Civil Procedure Code. The section enacts that the Rent Controller shall summarily reject an eviction petition if that petition raises between the same parties substantially the same issues as have been finally decided in a former proceeding under the Act. Two important requisites must be present for applying this section. One is that there must be identity of issues in the two proceedings. The other is that the former proceeding must have been decided on the very issues which figure in the later proceedings.

7. The question is whether these two requisites are fulfilled in the present case. The answer, to my mind must be clearly in the negative. For, while the issue as to bona fide requirement for personal occupation was an issue both in the former proceeding and in the present proceeding, that issue was not decided at all in the former proceeding. And while the disposal of the former proceeding was solely on the issue of notice to quit, no such issue at all figured between the parties in the present proceeding. Either way, therefore, Section 19 does not apply to the present case. The appellate authority was in error in summarily rejecting the present eviction petition as barred by res judicata under that provision.

8. It may be that the former decision of the Rent Controller on the issue as to quit notice can be assailed as erroneous in point of law, if such an argument were now open. Incidentally, the Supreme Court have recently laid down that the question of quit notice under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act is quite alien to the scheme of the Rent Control legislation and is altogether irrelevant in eviction proceedings before the Rent Controller. But can we go into the question at all now? We cannot. For seeing whether the present proceeding is or is not barred by res judicata, we do not have to, and we cannot examine the correctness or incorrectness of the decision in the former proceeding. We only have to see whether the same substantial issue raised between the parties had had a disposal on merits in the former proceeding. The inquiry, in this sense, might well be regarded as one on a question of fact touching the factum of disposal of the issue in the former proceeding, rather than on a question of law as to whether that decision was correct or n