The landlord is the best judge of his requirement and the tenant cannot dictate the landlord as to how and in what manner he should live. The availability of other vacant shops, as pleaded by the tenant, cannot dilute or mitigate the bona fide requirement of the landlord.

JUDGMENT :

SHARAD KUMAR SHARMA, J.

1. This is a tenant’s writ petition, where the tenant/petitioner has put a challenge to the concurrent judgments, as rendered on 18th December 2019, by the Court of Additional Civil Judge (Senior Division)/Prescribed Authority in P.A. Case No. 14 of 2018, Sumit Grover and Another vs. Shyam Sunder Kataria, by virtue of which, the Release Application, preferred by the respondent/landlord under Section 21(1)(a) of Act No. 13 of 1972, for release of the tenement (shop in dispute), lying in the property bearing Municipal No. 8/2 (64/57), Kaulagadh Road, Dehradun, had been directed to be vacated and a vacant and peaceful possession has been directed to be handed over to the landlord respondent.

2. Aggrieved against the said judgment, the petitioner/tenant had preferred a Rent Control Appeal under Section 22 of the Act No. 13 of 1972, which was remembered as Rent Control Appeal No. 5 of 2020, Shyam Sunder Kataria vs. Sumit Grover and Another, which too had been dismissed by the learned Appellate Court i.e. the Court of 4th Additional District Judge, Dehradun, by one of the impugned judgments dated 28th October, 2021, which had been put to challenge, in the present writ petition in its exercising powers under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, while exercising its supervisory jurisdiction, over the judgments passed by the subordinate Courts.

3. Brief facts of the case are, that the property in question as described hereinabove is a shop of 10 x 15 feet, which has been occupied by the petitioner/tenant, for the last over 28 years and was carrying a rent of Rs. 450/- per month. From the property in question, the petitioner contends that he had been carrying out a business under the name and style of ‘Neelkanth Gems and Jewellers’ for the last aforesaid 28 years and it's the tenancy, the ownership of which had later on devolved upon the respondent/landlord after having purchased the same from its previous landlord/owner of the property Mr. Deewan Chandra Suleja. Prior to the initiation of the proceedings under Section 21(1)(a) of the Act No. 13 of 1972, the landlord respondent is said to have issued notices under proviso to Section 21(1)(a) of the Act on 10th September 2017, as a consequence thereto, a request was made by giving a prior six months notice, to the petitioner/tenant to vacate the tenement in question, because the same was required by the applicant No. 1, for the purposes of meeting his need of opening of his office/chamber of lawyers, on the ground that since after completing his B. Com and L.L.B, the Applicant No. 1, has been registered with the Bar Council of Uttarakhand, and he intends to open his chamber from where he wants to carry out his practice in the taxation field of law and it was pleaded exclusively for the said purpose, that the shop in question was purchased by the applicants along with the other portion of the building in question in order to meet up the bona-fide need of the respondent/landlord for opening his lawyer’s chamber and for practicing his profession from the said place.

4. The applicant, in the Release Application, has contended that looking to the location of the shop and the nature of business, in which the said shop is to be utilised by the landlord/respondent, after its release, it would most appropriately serve the purpose of the professional need, as had been expressed by the landlord/respondent in the release application, because according to the landlord/respondent there is no other suitable/alternative place available to him, under his ownership from where he could conduct his practice as a lawyer.

5. In the Release Application, thus filed on 14th May 2018, the respondents/landlords had pleaded, that they had purchased the property in question from its predecessor landlord on 22nd November 2012; along with other adjoining shops and a building behind it, which has got its exclusive commercial utility. It was also alleged that since the father of the res