A landlord can seek eviction of a tenant on the ground of personal necessity even if he had rented out some rooms to tenants in the past, provided that he has a genuine need for the premises at the time of filing the ejectment petition.

Surinder Singh, J.

1. This is a tenants Revision against the decision of the Appellate Authority, Amritsar, who has ordered the eviction of the tenant on two of the grounds out of those which were claimed for ejectment. These two grounds are that the tenant has been guilty of such acts and conduct as are a nuisance to the occupiers of the neighbouring premises, and secondly that the premises in question were required by the respondent-landlord for his own use and occupation. It is relevant to mention here that the Rent Controller had, however, found that the grounds for the eviction of the petitioner were not substantiated and hence he dismissed the ejectment petition filed by the respondent-landlord. This verdict was, however, upset by the Appellate Authority in appeal.

2. It is not disputed that Narinjan Singh petitioner is occupying two rooms and a third room on the back of the garrage of House No.883/ 13, Sharifpura, Amritsar, which house is owned by the respondent. The two living rooms were taken on rent of Rs. 10/- per month with effect from August 1, 1961 and the third room behind the garrage was taken at Rs. 5/- per month with effect from October 15, 1961. Two separate Rent Notes were executed in this behalf and these are AW5/1 and AW 5/2. The petitioner is a Police Constable and his son is also now employed in the Police Force. It is also not disputed that one room. In the house in question has been kept by the landlord for his use and occupation whenever be comes to Amritsar. Otherwise, he is residing, at Village Bhalsaipur Purban in Tehsil Amritsar. However, the case of the petitioner is that the respondent has two rooms in the ground floor and four rooms in the first floor at his disposal. As regards these rooms, the respondent clarified in his replication that the above allegation is wrong and, in fact, these rooms were rented out to Iqbal Singh, Sucha Singh and Kishan Chand, who are occupying the same Further according to the respondent be has nine daughters and though eight of them were married, he had to perform the marriage ceremony of the ninth daughter for which purpose also he needed the house in question.

3. The various allegations and counter allegations in the pleadings of the parties resulted in the necessary issues being framed, but so far as this Court is concerned, as already noticed the parties have contested only the two grounds on which the petitioners ejectment has been ordered by the Appellate Authority. Coming to the first ground of nuisance, the respondent produced three witnesses namely, Krishan Chand (AW2), lqbal Singh (AW3) and Sucha Singh (AW4), apart from making a deposition himself and all these witnesses have stated with one voice that the petitioner and his on used abusive language whenever the respondent went to use the bathroom. This had necessitated the respondent to apply and get a separate water connection. The petitioner indeed produced some persons from the neighbourhood as to state that they had not heard of any quarrel between the parties, but this type of negative evidence has rightly been ignored in face of the testimony of the three witnesses mentioned above who are living in the very premises itself and are, therefore, natural witnesses to depose about this fact. Furthermore, the unreliability of the petitioners witnesses is evident from the fact that in their zeal to support the case of petitioner they made certain statements which went beyond the assertion of the petitioner himself It is undisputed that The petitioner had rented the demised premises in the year 1961, but RW1 and RW3, the witnesses of the petitioner deposed that they had been seeing the petitioner living in these rooms for the last about twenty six years which is obviously wrong.

4. The main bone of contention between the parties is the bona fide requirement of the premises by the respondent for his own use and occupation. In this behalf, there is no gainsaying that the respondent admitted