1. These two suits are ejectment suits filed by a landlord against his two ten-ants. Since the passing of the Bombay Rents, Hotels and Lodging House Rates Control Act (LVII [57] of 1947), this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain or try any suits between a landlord and a tenant to which the provisions of the Act apply; and they are exclusively triable under that Act in Greater Bombay by the Court of Small Causes. The defendants in both these suits have contended that this Court has no jurisdiction to try these suits; and that issue has been ordered by my learned brother Bhagwati J, to be tried as a preliminary issue.

2. Now, the only facts that are relevant for the determination of the question of jurisdiction are that by an agreement of lease dated 12.11. 1918, between the Trustees of the Port of Bombay and one Abraham Jacob Reymond, Reymond agreed to obtain from the trustees and the trustees agreed to grant him a lease of a certain plot of land, for the purpose of putting up a building thereon, for a period of 99 years. To the detailed provisions of this agreement I will revert later. The lease was accordingly granted on 30-1-1923, and the plaintiff is the successor-in-t