The Chief Justice.-This is an application by the owner of premises bearing municipal door No. 91, Mowbrays Road, Alwarpet, for the issue of a writ of certiorari to quash the order of the Chief Judge of the Court of Small Causes in H. R. A. No. 264 of 1948, dated 24th August, 1948. That appeal arose out of an application filed by the petitioner before the Rent Controller, Madras, for eviction of the first respondent from the premises on the ground that he had committed default in the payment of the rent for January, 1947. One of the main pleas of the respondent was that the application was not maintainable because of the dismissal of a prior application made by the petitioner to the Rent Controller on 5th June, 1947. On that date, neither the petitioner nor her Advocate was present when the application was called, and therefore the petition was dismissed for default. The respondent also raised other pleas on the merits. The Rent Controller by his order dated 29th January, 1948, passed an order for eviction of the respondent. He found that the respondent committed default in payment of the rent for January, 1947. He overruled the objection as to the maintainability of the application, because the prior application had not been judicially decided on the merits. There was an appeal by the respondent to the Court of Small Causes at Madras. The learned Chief Judge agreed with the Rent Controller on the merits that the respondent had committed default in paying the rent for January. He, however, considered that the objection of the respondent to the maintainability of the application was well founded. Relying mainly upon the provisions of sub-section (4) of section 12 and section 10 of the Act, he held that the present application was barred by reason of the dismissal of the prior application.

Section 10 of the Act runs thus:

“The Controller shall summarily reject any application under sub-section (2) or under subsection (3) of section 7 which raises substantially the same issues as have been finally decided in a former proceeding under this Act or under the corresponding provisions of the Madras House Rent Control Order, 1945, or the Madras Non-Residential Rent Control Order, 1945, between the same parties or between parties under whom they or any of them claim.”

Sub-section (4) of section 12 is as follows:

“The decision of the appellate authority and subject only to such decision, an order of the Controller shall be final and shall not be liable to be called in question in any Court of law whether in a suit or other proceeding or by way of appeal or revision.”

Mr. V.K. Thiruvenkatachari, the learned counsel for the petitioner, contended that neither provision has the effect of operating as a bar to the present application. The words “finally decided” in section 10, clearly imply that the prior application should have been decided on the merits. Without an adjudication on the merits, an issue cannot be said to have been finally decided. He relied upon the catena of decisions relating to the corresponding provision in the Civil Procedure Code, where it has been held that a decree of dismissal passed in a suit on default of appearance of the plaintiff does not operate as res judicata under section 11, Civil Procedure Code, or any other general principle. We agree with this contention. The words “finally decided” are words found in section 11 of the Civil Procedure Code, and we do not see why the judicial interpretation of the words in the Civil Procedure Code should not apply in construing the same words in the Rent Control Act.

Under the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code, when a suit is dismissed for the default of appearance of the plaintiff, a fresh suit on the same cause of action is barred. That is because of the specific provision of Order 9, rule 9. This provision must be construed along with the provision made in Order 9 for setting aside dismissals for default of appearance. In the absence of a provision similar to the