Interference with findings of fact.

This petition is to revise an order of the District Judge, Coimbatore, made under section 25 of the Madras Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1960. The respondent who is the landlord applied for eviction of the petitioner on the ground that the latter defaulted in payment of rents and that in any case the former required the premises bonafide for his own occupation. The first ground, which has been decided in favour of the petitioner, is no longer in issue. On the alternative ground,the respondent succeeded before the District Judge who reversed the order of the appellate Court and restored that of the Rent Controller. The District Judge considered that on the proved facts the proper conclusion to arrive at was that the landlord required the premises bonafide for his own occupation. The proved facts were that the landlord’s family was large, he had three sons and two grown up daughters; one of the sons was married and other two sons and two daughters were of marriageable age. The married son and daughter-in-law were working as teachers in Pollachi, where the premises in question is situate.

The question whether the landlord requires his premises bona fide for his own occupation is in one sense one of fact. Normally a Court of revision is not to deal with the matter as in an appeal by appreciating the evidence over again and accepting or rejecting the evidence on re-evaluation. What is contended before me for the petitioner is that the District Judge, while acting under section 25, over-stepped his jurisdiction in revision and interfered with a factual finding of the appellate Court. Section 25 gives revisional jurisdiction and the scope of this jurisdiction is to call for and examine the records relating to any order passed or proceeding taken under the Act by the lower authority for purposes of satisfying the revision Court as to the legality, regularity or propriety of such order or proceeding and the revision Court may pass such order in reference thereto as it thinks fit. On more or less similar language Rajagopala Aiyengar, J. (as he then was) expressed an opinion the terms of which are found set out in Sasivarna Thevar v. Ponnu1. The learned Judge there stated that while a revisional authority can interfere with a question of law, it cannot normally interfere with a finding of fact unless “(a) there was no other materials on which such a finding could be based, or (b) the finding has been reached by a consideration of irrelevant or inadmissible matter, or (c) it is so perverse that no reasonable person could have reached that conclusion or (d) the finding had been reached by an erroneous understanding of the law applicable to the matter.” This view of the scope of the jurisdiction was apparently accepted by the then learned Chief Justice in Sasivarna Thevar v. Ponnu1 . Reliance is placed on this view of the jurisdiction and it is contended that before the District Judge in this case, none of the four conditions was present, and, therefore, he exceeded his jurisdiction in disturbing the factual finding. I do not understand the remarks of Rajagopala Aiyengar, J., or those in Sasivarna Thevar v. Ponnu1, as exhaustively defining the jurisdiction under section 25. With respect, I am in entire agreement that any of the four conditions referred to in Sasivarna Thevar v. Ponnu1, may attract the revisional jurisdiction. But I am inclined to think that those four conditions are not exhaustive. All that was meant while specifying the four conditions, as I think, was that the revision Court while acting under section 25 should not act as if it was sitting in appeal, appreciate the evidence, weigh the same and by that process come to a different conclusion and reverse a finding of fact arrived at by the appellate Court. Where the facts are all admitted or proved, the question whether the conclusion reached on those facts is proper is, in my view, within the purview of the revisional jurisdiction under section 25. It sho