Allottee held to a person aggrieved.

The petitioner herein is a Central Government servant working in the postal department and he was allotted Premises No.41, Royapettah High Road by the Government on a monthly rent of Rs.55/-. The said premises was earlier requisitioned by the Government. The owner of the premises applied for release of the said premises on the ground that he required the premises bona fide for his own occupation. Though similar requests from the owner had been rejected on earlier occasions, the Accommodation Controller has chosen to direct the release of the building by an order dated 1-7-1982. In pursuance of the said order releasing the building at the instance of the owner, the petitioner who was an allottee was directed to deliver possession of the building under threat of a forcible eviction by an order dated 2-6-1983. The said order was received by the petitioner on 7-6-1983 and the petitioner thereafter filed an appeal to the first respondent herein, the State Government, on 20-7-1983. The Government had chosen to entertain that appeal and has disposed of the same on merits holding that the owner of the building has established his bona fide require-ment for his own occupation and in that view dismissed the appeal filed by the petitioner. Aggrieved by the order of dismissal of his appeal, the petitioner has filed the present writ petition for quashing the order of the Government made in G.O.Ms.No.365 Home dated 15-2-1984. Apart from questioning the order of the Government on merits, the petitioner has also raised a ground that in so far as the Accommodation Controller did not fix any specified date for hearing and give notice of the same to the parties before him, the ultimate order passed by him stands vitiated for not following the procedure set out in Rules 11 and 12 of the Tamil Nadu Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Rules, 1974.

2. When the Writ Petition was taken up for hearing, the learned Additional Government Pleader appearing for the first and the second respondents and the counsel appearing for the third respondent, the owner of the premises, have raised an objection as to the maintainability of the writ petition and their objections are two-fold. One is that as the petitioner being only a licensee and as his rights flow only from the Government who had directed the release of the building and as he has no independent right in relation to the subject-matter he cannot maintain this writ petition against the orders of the Government. The second is that even assuming that the writ petition is maintainable, the petitioner is not entitled to succeed therein as his appeal before the Government was admittedly time barred and as such the Government should not have entertained the appeal and disposed of the same on merits.

3. In support of the first contention, reference is made to the decision of Sathiadev, J. in VISWANATHAN v. THE COLLECTOR OF MADRAS, (Writ Petition No.9559 of 1982) and the decision of Mohan, J. in DURAI v. GOVERNMENT OF TAMIL NADU, (1976) 89

Law Weekly 558. In the first case it has been held that since the writ petitioner is only a licensee under the Government which is legally the tenant of the premises, he cannot claim the status of a tenant under the Act and, therefore, he is not entitled to challenge an order passed by the Government directing the release of the building and the petitioner as an allottee is bound by the action of the Government and he cannot claim any independent right apart from his position as an allottee. In the second case, a house requisitioned by the Government under section 3(3) was later released at the instance of the owner of the building. That order directing the release passed by the Government was challenged by the allottee of the premises on the ground that he was not given any notice before the order of release was passed and, therefore, the order releasing the building is vitiated. Mohan, J. while dismissing the writ petition pointed out that the order directing the