Petition by landlord claiming possession of the building.

Petitioner is a tenant of a non-residential building 6, Davidson Street, G.T.. Madras, owned by the respondent. The respondent got an order for eviction on his application before the Second Additional Rent Controller, Madras who held that the respondent who is the owner of the non-residential building, does not own any other non-residential building other than the one leaded to the petitioner and that he bona fide required it for his business, as the managing partner of the Mishba Transport Corporation and the said order for eviction was confirmed by the appellate authority. The petitioner has come up to the Court in revision.

Veeraswami, J., before whom the petition came up for a final disposal, considered that the question, whether one of the partners of a firm who is the owner of a non-residential premises could apply for eviction of the tenant occupying the same on the ground that he required it for carrying on his partnership business, should be decided by a Bench, having regard to the conflict of approach to the fundamental principle and in order to have an authoritative decision to guide the Rent Control-lens.

The decision in this case has to be made on the interpretation of section 10 (3) (a) (iii) of the Madras Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1960, hereinafter called the Act, which runs as follows:

“In case it is any other non-residential building, if the landlord or his son is not occupying a non-residential building in the city, town or village concerned which is his own.”

On the finding of the Courts below, which is not and could not be disputed, the respondent is the owner of the premises, 6, Davidson Street, G.T., Madras, occupied by the petitioner as tenant. The respondent requires the premises for his partnership business. On a plain reading of the sub-section quoted above it is clear that it covers the claim of the respondent for eviction.

The learned Advocate for the petitioner incidentally argued that the respondent is carrying on his business in his own premises. But what the sub-section quoted above prohibits is a claim for eviction by a landlord in occupation of any other non-residential building. In the present case, the respondent is carrying oh his partnership business, namely, keeping lorries for transport of goods in the compound of his residential building, and his claim for eviction cannot, therefore, be negatived by virtue of anything contained in the above sub-section. In fact,, the petitioner has not taken any such plea before the Rent Controller, or the appellate authority or even in the grounds of revision.

In Sha Rikhabdas Amirtlal v. Venkata Subbiah Chetti1, the question that arose was whether the partners of a firm, who required a building which they had purchased, for the purpose of carrying on business of their own which they were carrying on in a rented premises, could apply for eviction under section 10 (3) (a) (iii) of the Act. Venkatadri, J., held that the application was maintainable and that it was necessary that the building should be required for the applicants exclusive business. He rightly quoted with approval the following passage with regard to the construction of the word ‘own ‘appearing in Firm Ranjikla & Co. v. Vithal Pondurang2, to negative the contention that a landlord applying for eviction for carrying on a business should do so for his exclusive business only:

"Persons who have entered into partnership with one another are called individually partners and collectively " a firm " and the name under which the business is carried on is called the firm name. It is setded law that a firm is not a separate legal entity and the firm name is a compendious way in which the business of the partners is carried on. Each partner carried on business for himself as principal and also as an agent for the other partners. Mutual agency is an essential condition of partnership. It must therefore be held that the landlord himself is carrying on the wholesale business in alu