Consideration of available alternate accommodation.

The petitioner, a revenue peon drawing Rs.51 a month employed in the office of the Chief Engineer for Irrigation seeks to revise an order passed by the Additional Judge of the Court of Small Causes confirming an order by the Rent Controller directing his eviction from a portion of a building with a separate door number 543 in Pycrofts Road, Triplicane. It is not disputed that this peon’s wife did here a business in betel and curd and that the petitioner has been in occupation as a tenant for twenty-five years. The respondent was also a tenant from the same landlord of premises with a separate door number, 542 until by a registered sale deed, Exhibit P.2 dated 9th October, 1953, he purchased both the door numbers, 542 and 543. He, then, on the footing of his purchase and on the plea that he wanted the premises occupied by the petitioner for an extension of his own maligai and provision stores, applied to evict the petitioner. Both the Courts concurred in finding that the respondent bona fide required premises No. 543 for an extension of his own business. Both Courts also concurred in holding that this was not an application for eviction which could be dismissed under the proviso to section 7 which requires its rejection if the Controller was satisfied that the hardship which may be caused to the tenant by granting it will outweigh the advantage to the landlord. I can only express my surprise at both the Courts taking this view, as both petitioner and respondent were both tenants in the same position and doing business in these adjacent premises. Respondent prospered in his maligai business and after purchasing the entire building he is seeking to evict the petitioner out of his long standing tenancy of about twenty-five years, leaving him no place to carry on his business. It is all very well for the Courts to take the view that the petitioner can find some other place in which to carry on with his wife business in betel and curd. This proviso is of particular application to cases coming within the scope of section 7(3) (c) and applies to a landlord who is occupying only a part of the building, whether residential or non-residential, seeking to evict a tenant occupying the whole or any portion of the remaining part of the building, if he requires additional accommodation for residential purposes or for the purposes of a business which he is carrying on. A building is defined in section 2(1) as “any building or hut or part of a building or hut, let or to be let separately for residential or non-residential purposes.” Part of a building also, therefore comes within the scope of the definition of the word “building” and it is in the light of this definition that section 7(3) (c) has to be interpreted. It is under this section that the landlord seeks eviction of the petitioner. The learned Additional Judge rejected the legal position taken for the petitioner that the premises Nos.542 and 543 were separate buildings with separate entries into the road and no inter-connecting door from one to the other. From the sketch filed, they appear to be structurally in one building in the ordinary sense in the ownership of one owner before the entire building was purchased in 1953 by the respondent. There can, however, be no doubt at all that premises 542 and 543 were each a building as defined by section 2(1) of the Act and the fact that a municipal assessment notice Exhibit P. 3 showed that these two door numbers were treated as only one property does not affect this legal position. For purposes of the Madras Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1949 a building means any building or hut or part of a building let separately for residential or non-residential purposes. Assuming that the premises let to the petitioner and occupied by him for the past twenty-five years were part of the same structural building, nonetheless the premises would fall within the definition of a building under section 2(1). Nor can the purchase by the respo