The central legal point established is the entitlement of NRIs to evict tenants for bonafide requirement under Section 13B of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949.

1. This judgment shall dispose of two revision petitions viz. C.R. No. 4525 of 2013 titled as Bansal Trading and another v. Dr. Viranmal Singh Toor and others and C.R. No. 4648 of 2013 titled as Bharat Gulati v. Dr. Viranmal Singh Toor and others, as eviction of the petitioners in both the petitions has been ordered from the demised premises on an application filed by the respondent-landlords; the premises in dispute are part of one building; and the grounds raised in these revision petitions are common and are on similar facts. However, the facts are taken from CR No. 4525 of 2013 for convenience sake. The respondents-landlords filed a petition under Section 13B of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (hereinafter referred to as, the Act) seeking ejectment of the petitioners from the demised premises (i.e. shop located on ground floor of SCO No. 42-43- 44, Sector 17-A, Chandigarh) being Non Resident Indians, who required the demised premises for their own personal use and occupation.

2. It has been specifically stated in the eviction petition that the respondents are Indians by birth and fall within the definition of Non Resident Indian as contained under Section 2(dd) of the Act and have decided to come back to India to reside and settle in Chandigarh and start a Joint Venture in the demised premises. It has also been submitted by them specifically that they are the owners of the demised premises for more than five years; and neither they have occupied any other commercial premises in the urban area of Chandigarh, nor they have got vacated any such premises after commencement of the Act.

3. Upon notice, the petitioners filed an application for leave to defend under Section 18A(4) of the Act submitting that the eviction petition was not maintainable as the respondents are not the NRIs because they do not fulfill the mandatory requirements to claim themselves as NRIs as defined under Section 13B of the Act. They further submitted that the respondents have filed another petition of similar nature against other tenants under the same provisions of law and they cannot get vacated more than one unit as per law. Moreover, the hospital cannot be operated from the demised premises unless change of user is allowed by the Chandigarh Administration. A further ground has been taken that the proper service was not effected upon the petitioners as per the statutory requirements.

4. The application was contested by the respondent-landlords submitting that they have filed the present petition as well as other petitions against other tenants for getting whole of the building vacated from all the tenants in order to start their hospital. The petitioners are tenants only in a part of the entire building. It has been submitted that the entire building is required by the respondents to set-up their business and they are NRIs.

5. Vide impugned order dated 16.05.2013, the Rent Controller, Chandigarh has rejected the prayer of the petitioners and in view of the Full Bench judgment of this Court in Anwar Ali v. Gian Kaur 2001 (2) RCR (Rent) 604, has ordered eviction of the petitioners being consequential. The relevant part of the impugned order be noticed, which reads thus:

6. After hearing the rival contentions of both sides and after going through the case file properly, I have come to the considered conclusion that first of all respondent has failed to establish by any cogent prima facie evidence that he has not received copies of documents along with the summons. Once detailed application seeking leave to defend was filed, it is presumed that service was valid one. Therefore such contention raised is liable to be negated.

7. The petitioners have prima facie established that they are co-owners of the property in dispute for the last more than five years by virtue of copy of allotment letter placed on the file. The contention of the respondent that petitioners do not fall under the definition of Non Resident Indian is also not