Judgment

Mrs. Meenakshi I. Mehta, J.

By way of the instant revision petition, the petitioner (one of the LRs of the tenant) has assailed the order dated 07.11.2022 (Annexure P-9) passed by learned Rent Controller, Bathinda, whereby the application (Annexure P-7) moved by him with a prayer for issuing the direction to respondent No.1-landlord (here-in-after to be referred as ‘the landlord’) to produce the PAN Cards of the Hotels named and styled as M/s Paras Hotel, M/s Manoj Hotel, M/s Hotel Bansidhar and M/s Hotel Hemlata or of the owners of the above-said Hotels, has been dismissed.

2. Shorn and short of unnecessary details, the facts, culminating in the filing of the present revision petition, are that the landlord moved a petition against the tenant named Onkar Nath (since deceased and now, represented through his LRs) for seeking his eviction from the demised premises on the ground of personal necessity. The petitioner summoned the witness from the office of Income-Tax Department, along-with the record but he (witness) was unable to produce the same for want of the requisite details of the PAN Cards of the afore-said Hotels and then, the petitioner filed the above-mentioned application which has been dismissed vide the impugned order.

3. I have heard learned counsel for the petitioner in the instant revision petition, at the preliminary stage and have also gone through the file carefully.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioner has contended that the landlord sought the eviction of the afore-named tenant on the ground that he (landlord) required the demised premises for his personal necessity but in fact, he is already running the above-said Hotels and therefore, this ground is not a bonafide one and the petitioner intends to establish these facts by summoning the record from the afore-referred Department and the details of the said record, i.e the PAN Card numbers etc, are required to be provided to the official witness for this purpose but the Rent Controller has erroneously dismissed the above-said application vide the impugned order and therefore, this order is not legally sustainable and deserves to be set- aside. To buttress her contentions, she has placed reliance upon the verdicts rendered by Hon’b1e the Supreme Court in Ashok Sharma Vs. Ram Adhar Sharma , 2009 (2) RCR (Civil) 503, Nayini Narasimha Reddy Vs. Dr. K Laxman and others 2006 (3) RCR (Civil) 443, Andhra Pradesh High Court in Chekka Krishna Prasad Vs. Kotha Appa Rao , 1998 (1) API 170 and Gauhati High Court in Sunita Jalan @ Sunita Agarwalla Vs. Manoj Jalan and another , 2022(4) GauLR 250.

5. However, the afore-raised contentions are devoid of any merit because in Annexure P-8, i.e the reply to application Annexure P-7, the landlord has categorically asserted that no PAN Card has been issued in respect of the said four Hotels as these names pertain to a single property and no such Hotels are being run separately. Further, a perusal of Annexure P-3, the reply filed by the landlord to another application (Annexure P-2) as moved by the petitioner earlier with the similar prayer, reveals that the PAN Cards of Manoj Kumar and Paras had been attached therewith while pleading that Hemlata did not have the one and that till then, they had not filed the Income-Tax Returns as their income was not taxable. In these circumstances, the landlord cannot be directed to produce the documents which, as per his version, do not exist. However, in case, he produces the same on the record at the later stage, then, the Rent Controller shall be at liberty to take note of this fact in accordance with law.

6. The observations, as made in Ashok Sharma (supra), Nayini Narasimha Reddy (supra), Chekka Krishna Prasad (supra) and Sunita Jalan @ Sunita Agarwalla (supra), are of no help to the petitioner because in Ashok Sharma (sugra), it has been observed that it is open to a party to summon witness to the Court or to bring a witness to give evidence or to produce documents, even without apply