V.M. Syam Kumar, J.

1. This Rent Control Revision is filed by the tenants aggrieved by the concurrent findings rendered by the Rent Control Appellate Authority as well as the Rent Control Court.

2. The respondent/landlady had filed the Rent Control Petition seeking eviction under Sections 11(2)(a)(b), 11(3) and 11(4) (v) of the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1965 (for short 'the Act'). The Rent Control Court had, after hearing both parties and a detailed trial, allowed the eviction under Section 11(3) and refused the prayers sought under Section 11(2)(a)(b) and 11(4)(v) of the Act. The tenants challenged the eviction ordered under Section 11(3) of the Act by filing a Rent Control Appeal. Upon dismissal of the said Rent Control Appeal, this revision is filed.

3. We have heard the learned counsel for the petitioners and the respondents.

4. It is the case of the petitioners that the courts below had failed to appreciate that the landlady could not substantiate the bonafide need. It is submitted that though Section 11(3) of the Act had been invoked claiming that the eviction from the relevant premises was needed for the dependant daughter of the landlady to expand her running hotel business/tea shop, the said contention has not been substantiated by producing any tangible evidence to show that such a hotel business/tea shop was actually being undertaken by the daughter from the adjacent premises. The learned counsel contended that except for the interested oral testimony rendered by the landlady (PW1) and her daughter (PW2), nothing to substantiate the running of the hotel business/tea shop had been put forth. It is submitted that on the said count itself, the findings of the courts below are vitiated and fit to be set aside.

5. Per contra, the learned counsel for the respondent/landlady submitted that the concurrent findings rendered by the courts below does not merit any interference. It is submitted that the courts below had validly concluded that the need projected by the respondent is bonafide. The oral testimony of the landlady and her daughter on the factum of running a hotel/tea shop had been found reliable by the courts below. That the landlady does not have any vacant building in her possession in the same city, town or area had also been concluded. It was also found that there is nothing on record for the court to be satisfied that the tenants are depending on the income derived from the petition schedule building and there was nothing on record to show that there are no other suitable buildings available in the locality sufficient for shifting the business of the tenants. According to the learned counsel, it was thus validly concluded by the courts below that the landlady is entitled to an order of eviction under Section 11(3) of the Act. It is submitted that the husband of the landlady was already running a hotel business/tea shop in a building situated on a property contiguous to the property in which the tenanted premises is situated. The deposition of the landlady and her daughter specifically evidences the bonafide need.

6. It is submitted that the room lying adjacent to the tenanted premises are locked and unused. These rooms are not at all used by the tenants for their business purpose. The landlady is in dire need of the said scheduled building for her daughter to expand her business. The revision petitioners do not use these rooms any more and they are actually not in need of the said rooms. Reliance is placed on the dictum laid on by this Court in Ameer and another v. M/s.B.Amoo and Brothers and others [2019 (5) KHC 163] and it is contended that the twin conditions which are to be satisfied as laid down in the said decision have been satisfactorily met in the case of the landlady, thereby rendering the findings entered into by the courts below in her favour valid and legally subsisting. The learned counsel thus prays that the revision is only to be dismissed.

7. We have heard both sides in detail and have considered the contentions put forth. The order/judgment of the courts below and the documents produced have also been perused.

8. We note that it has been the specific and consistent contention of the tenants before the Rent Control Court that Ratnajyothi, (PW2), the daughter of the landlady was not conducting any hotel business/tea shop or any other business in the rooms adjacent to the petition schedule room. It was their consistent case that the said Ratnajyothi was leading a peaceful retired life with her family and that the husband of the landlady who had previously made several attempts to evict the tenants from the petition schedule room was behind the petition. The tenants had specifically denied that neither the landlady nor her daughter were conducting a hotel business/teashop from the adjacent premises necessitating expansion as is not put forth in the Rent Control Petition.

9. We note that the courts below had however concluded that the bonafide need of the landlady stood proved from the deposition of the landlady and her daughter while they were examined as PW1 and PW2 respectively. It has also been concluded by the Rent Control Court that when PW2 was examined she had deposed that she bona fide requires the petition schedule building for expanding her hotel business purportedly conducted in the adjacent rooms. However, not even a suggestion was put to her to the effect that she does not require the petition schedule building bona fide. It is also seen concluded by the Rent Control Court that even if it is admitted that PW2 was conducting a day care center in Bangalore or that she owns a bus business as alleged, it cannot be said that she cannot conduct any other business in the petition schedule building. Reliance is also seen placed by the Rent Control Court on the dictum laid down in Pengattil Moosa v. Villippavil Moideen Kutty Haji and another [2018 (5) KHC 808], wherein it has been held that the landlord is not required by the Act to plead all his business ventures in a petition seeking eviction under Section 11(3) of the Act, and he is only bound to make out a prima facie case regarding his bona fides in the proposed need.

10. We are unable to agree with the said conclusion arrived at by the court below. It is trite that bona fide need when claimed under Section 11 (3) of the Act has to be independently and affirmatively proved by the landlord. It must be a real and tenable need rather than a mere pretext or ruse to evict the tenants. It is the landlord's burden to produce concrete evidence to demonstrate and establish the genuineness of the need. Unless the said burden has been successfully discharged by the landlord, claim under Section 11 (3) cannot be stated to have been validly substantiated. No presumption regarding bonafide need can be deduced, merely from the oral testimony of the landlord or the witness examined on behalf of the landlord, for whose benefit the landlord seeks eviction of the tenanted premises. As laid down in Ameer and another (supra), the twin conditions to be satisfied are that (1) the person for whose need the building is required is a member of the landlord's family dependent on her and (2) that the need is bona fide. Though reliance has been placed by the Rent Control Court upon the said judgment, the crucial aspect regarding independent proof of existence of the bonafide need as well as the burden upon the landlord to discharge the same had been overlooked.

11. The reliance put forth by the counsel for the landlady on the dictum in Ammu K. and others v. Nafeesa and others [2015 (5) KHC 718] to contend that the need put forward by the landlord has to be examined on the presumption that the same is a genuine one, in the absence of materials to the contra though relevant, does not apply to a context wherein the landlord had totally failed to show on the basis of any legally reliable materials or evidence that they need to occupy the premises for a real and subsisting reason. It is only when the landlord on the basis of materials on record, succeeds in showing that the need to occupy the premises is natural, real, sincere and honest, and not a ruse to evict the tenant from the tenanted premises, that the landlord will be entitled for an order of eviction under Section 11(3) of the Act, of course subject to the first and second provisos of Section 11 (3) of the Act [See Gireesh Babu T.P. v. Jameela and others [2021 (5) KHC SN 30] and Aboobacker C.P. v. K.T.Sreelatha Nambiar [2022 KHC 5100].

12. Admittedly no reliable evidence except the interested oral testimony of the landlady and the other witness examined from her side are forthcoming in the case at hand to substantiate the claim that a hotel business/tea shop was or is being run from the relevant premises adjacent to which the tenanted room is situated. The landlady had failed to produce any other documentary or other evidence to substantiate that a hotel business/tea shop was being conducted from the adjacent premise. The same was even more necessary especially in the teeth of the contentions of the tenants that no such business activity was ever being conducted from their adjacent premises and that the daughter of the landlady for whose purported benefit the eviction is sought had been living in Bangalore. It is also relevant to note that the tenants had on their part produced Exhibits B1 to B17 to show that they had been running a tea shop from the tenanted premises. The observation of the Rent Control Court that there was no suggestion from the part of the tenants to PW2 that she does not require the petition schedule building bonafide is no substitute to the burden that is upon the landlady to prima facie discharge that she need the tenanted premises for the bonafide need that she has put forth. The courts below erred in overlooking the said crucial aspect.

13. The finding regarding bonafide need had been arrived at in favour of the landlady notwithstanding the fact that no tangible or legally reliable material whatsoever to substantiate the existence of a running hotel business by the 1st respondent landlady's daughter had not been put forth. Merely on the oral submission made by the landlady and her witnesses that a hotel was and is being conducted, no eviction could have been granted. The second of the twin conditions to be satisfied as laid down in Ameer and another (supra) had not been proved in a manner acceptable in law.

14. In view of the above, we conclude that the findings arrived at by the courts below that the bonafide need of the landlady has been validly proved and substantiated cannot be sustained. The said finding arrived at by the Rent Control Court without any reliable basis or tangible evidence and its confirmation by the Appellate Authority are perverse and legally unsustainable. We hence allow this Rent Control Revision and set aside the judgment and order rendered by the Appellate Authority as well as the Rent Control Court. This order shall not prevent the respondent/s from seeking eviction on any other ground if available under the Act.

R.C.Revision is allowed.