Excess payment made by the tenant as house tax can be adjusted towards the interest liability on arrears of rent, resulting in compliance with the proviso to Section 13(2)(i) of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949.

Mehar Singh, J.

1. This is a landlords revision application on his failure to obtain eviction of the tenant, which was claimed on a number of grounds, but only two grounds survive for consideration in this revision application.

2. The first ground urged is that the first date of hearing of the eviction application was October 30, 1964, the application having been made by the landlord on September 24, 1964. After the case had been adjourned on October 30, 1964, to a future date, on the very day the tenant appeared before the Rent Controller, with his counsel, and under the orders of the Rent Controller made a deposit in the treasury of the amount of arrears claimed by the landlord with costs of the application and interest calculated upto the date of the application, which, as stated, was September 24, 1964. An argument on the side of the landlord that this was not a tender within the meaning and scope of proviso to clause (i) of sub-section (2) of Section 13 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (East Punjab Act 3 of 1949), because it had not been made when the eviction application was called for hearing by the Rent Controller and had been made after the eviction application had been adjourned to a future hearing, though made on the very same day, did not find favour with the authorities below, the authorities relying in this respect on Mukh Ram v. Siri Ram, 1959 PLR 561, in which the learned Chief Justice held that the law does not require that the amount of rent should be tendered to the landlord himself or to the counsel of the landlord. It declare merely that the tender should be made on the first hearing of the case. Tender would be perfectly valid in the eye of law if it is made either to the landlord or his counsel or agent, or to the Controller for payment to the landlord, and the learned Chief Justice further held that when the Legislature has directed that the tenants should tender the arrears of rent on the first hearing of the application, it appears to require that the tender should be made at any time on the day on which the application comes up for hearing for the first time, and that if the tender is made at any time during the working hours, the provisions of law are completely satisfied. I agree entirely with the opinion of the learned Chief Justice and so this argument is not available to the landlord even at this stage in revision.

3. The only other argument that is urged by the learned counsel for the landlord is that while making payment in the wake of the proviso to clause (i) of sub-section (2) of Section 13 of the Act, the tenant paid interest on the arrears of rent down to September 24, 1964, that is to say, down to the date of the eviction application, whereas his liability was to pay interest on those arrears down to the date of the first hearing, that is to say, down to October 30, 1964, as held by a division Bench of this Court in Puran Chand v. Mangal, 1969 RCR 290 : 1969 RCR 290. So according to him, the tenant did not comply with that proviso. On this short ground, he says, the tenant must suffer eviction. The reply on the side of the tenant by his learned counsel is that even though the tenant has paid interest on the arrears of rent down to the date of the eviction application only and not down to the date of the first hearing, but the payment made by him covers all that he was to pay under the proviso to clause (i) of sub-section (2) of Section 13 of the Act. His first contention in this respect is that the landlord in his eviction application claimed in the arrears an amount of Rs. 39/- as the amount of house-tax paid by him, which he could not claim as arrears as held by the learned Judges in Puran Chands case. In that case the learned Judges were of the view that under Section 9(1) of the Act there is no automatic increase in the rent on account of the landlord having paid house tax. He has to take steps to increase the rent to the extent of the amount of the house t