( 1 ) THIS is a defendants appeal in a suit for ejectment and arrears of rent. The suit was filed on 31-10-1946; when the U. P. Ordinance 3 of 1946 was in force, the relief for ejectment being based on the landlords own requirement of the house. The defendants, who are father and son, executed a rent note in the plaintiffs favour on 23-1-1941, at a monthly rent of Rs. 4 in respect of the house from which their ejectment was sought by the plaintiff. A notice was sent by the plaintiff to the defendants on 9-9-1946, asking them to quit the house by 22-10-1946, and also to pay the arrears of rent. The relief for ejectment was of course, sought on the basis of this notice and the defendants refusal to leave the house.

( 2 ) THE defence taken was that the notice was bad, that the defendants had sent Rs. 23-1-0 after deducting 0-15-0 as cost of repairs to the plaintiff, this amount being the sent for the six months for which the claim had been made, that the amount had not been accepted by the plaintiff, that the defendants had, therefore, not been in default of payment of rent and that the plaintiffs allegation of personal need of the house was untrue.

( 3 ) THE trial Court, while decreeing the arrears of rent, dismissed the relief for ejectment, putting the costs on the parties themselves The findings recorded by the Court were that the notice served by the plaintiff was valid, that be did not require the house for his own use and that Rs. 24 were payable to the plaintiff as arrears of rent.

( 4 ) ON appeal by the plaintiff the relief for ejectment was also allowed, with the result that the entire suit stood decreed. The findings in appeal were that the notice was valid and that the U. P. (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act, 3 of 1947, was not applicable, as the house lay within the town area of Qaimganj.

( 5 ) THE only point of substance urged before me by the learned counsel for the defendants-appellants was that, although the Act just mentioned did not apply on the date of the decree of the lower appellate Court, it is applicable now, as the Act has since been extended to the town area of Qaimganj under a notification dated 5-3-1949, published at page 201 of the U. P. (Hindi) Gazette.

( 6 ) TO begin with, if by reason of this notification the U. P. Act 3 of 1947 is held applicable to the present case, we shall be face to face with a very anomalous situation. That would be that, although none of the provisions of the Act were applicable on the date the suit was filed on 31-10-1946, we would be penalising the plaintiff for not doing something which subsequently came to be enjoined by the Act as a result of the notification just referred to. Such a position is commensurate neither with logic nor the ordinary principles of justice. How can a party be made to suffer for not doing something which the law had never enjoined during the period to which the charge about his failure to do that thing relates? To put the position in a concrete form, there was no such provision on the date of the institution of the suit in the present case as is contained in Section 3 of the Act, requiring the landlord to claim the ejectment of his tenant either on the happening of certain specified events or on any other ground with the permission of the District magistrate. This provision, so far as the locality in dispute is concerned, came to apply only on 5-3-1949, when the notification referred to above was published, To hold, therefore, that the plaintiff ought to have complied with the rules and restrictions contained in Section 3 even at a time when they never existed in this particular locality would be to insist upon something which was a veritable impossibility. In this view, there was, of course, no defect in the suit filed by the plaintiff-respondent by reason of his having failed to do something before he filed it. The question arose before a learned Judge of this Court in Rup Lal v. Ram Swarup, 1950 ALL L. J. 345, an