JUDGMENT

A proximate equal of the issues involved in these Original Petitions may be expressed as “perversions of best things to worst abuses” as Milton limned in Paradise Lost.

2. Disquieting is the litigative trend, where a tenant takes the landlord in a law suit seeking protection from forcible eviction – a rhetoric, unaccompanied by a real threat on facts, in many a cases – but without performing his fundamental obligation in law to pay the rent? Is the plaintiff/tenant entitled to an equitable relief of injunction from eviction? Should the suit continue even when the plaintiff/tenant fails to pay the arrears of rent; or whether the same is liable to be aborted by a process known to law? Can pleadings be struck off in such cases as an abuse of the process of the court? Up to what extent, law recognises the tenant's right to continue in the building, without paying the rent, under the guise of a protective order obtained by alleging a threat of forcible eviction? These are a few questions, which surface for consideration in these Original Petitions.

2. The bare minimum facts in the three Original Petitions are summarised below:

O.P.(C) Nos.2307 and 2309 of 2022 O.P.(C) Nos.2307 and