MUHAMMAD SHARIF AND Another vs MUHAMMAD AFZAL SOHAIL Etc.

ORDER

ASLAM RIAZ HUSSAIN, I.--This petition is directed against the judgment of the-Lahore High Court dated 27-1-1981 dismissing the petitioners tenants, constitutional petition.

2: The facts leading to the present petition are briefly as follows:- The petitioners are the tenants of Khurshid Alam, respondent No. 2, in respect of Shop No. B-IV-53 situates in Hamayun Bazar, Sheikhupura, Khurshid Alam, respondent, the landlord, filed an ejectment petition against the ,petitioners in the Court of Rent Controller, Sheikhupura, on several grounds including that of requirement for personal use. The petition was, however, dismissed by the Rent Controller on 29-1-1980. The landlord filed an appeal against' the aforementioned order.

The learned Additional District Judge, Sheikhupura heard the appeal, accepted the same and ordered the ejectment of the petitioners, the tenants.

3. The petitioners thereupon filed a writ petition in the High Court assailing the judgment of the Additional District Judge on the grounds, inter alia, that the learned appellate Judge' had misread the evidence, that the landlord had, in fact, failed to prove that he bona fide required the shop-in- question for his personal use, and that since the landlord was running the business of selling milk in the deori of his house, he could not ask for the vacation of the shop. The learned High Court considered all the above- . Noted contentions and delivered an elaborate judgment holding that in the circumstances of the case the constitutional petition was not competent. The learned Judge, however, granted a further period of one month to vacate the shop.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioners urged before us that the respondent-landlord was already running his business (of selling milk) in the deori of his house. As such he was already in possession of x business premises and could not, therefore, ask for the vacation of the shop-in-question for running it himself.

5. This contention is wholly misconceived because the very fact thatthe landlord was constrained to run his business in the deori of his residential house although be owned a shop in the same locality, would show that he genuinely required the said shop for his personal use. We are of the view that the petitioners were fully aware that a writ petition did not lie in these circumstances, but had filed it merely to gain time and delay their eviction from the shop. We have been noticing, of late, that notwithstanding the fact that the Legislature, in its wisdom, has abolished the second appeal in cases under the West Pakistan Urban Rent Restriction Ordinance and has made the orders of the District Judge as final, yet the parties, probably after obtaining legal advice, have taken to filing writ petitions in the High-Court against the final order passed by the appellate Court, merely to take another chance or to delay their eviction, hoping that the matter shall take consider--able time to be disposed of or that in any case the High Court while dismissing their writ petition may be persuaded to allow further time for vacating the premises-in-question, The writ petition are argued before the High Court as if they are regular second appeals and we notice that the learned Judge of the High Court take great pains to re-apprise the evidence and to consider each and every contention raised by the petitioner's side before deciding the petition without realising that. More often than not, such petitions are merely a device to circumvent the amendment in the lay and defeat the obvious intention of the Legislature, namely, a speed determination of cases under the Urban Rent Restriction Ordinance. Such frivolous applications not only cause the poor litigants to incur necessary expenditure but also result in the waste of valuable public time and should, therefore, be discouraged by the High Court. It has been repeatedly held that a tribunal having jurisdiction to decide the matter is competent to decide it rightly or wrongly and the mere fact that another conclusion could b arrived at from the evidence does not make it a case for interference in the exercise of its constitutional jurisdiction.

It has been observed by this Court in Muhammad Hussain Munir and others v. Sikandar and others PLD 1974 SC 139- "it is wholly wrong to consider that the above constitutional. Provision was designed to empower the High Court to interfere with the decision of a Court or tribunal of inferior jurisdiction merely because in its opinion the decision is wrong. In that case, it would make the High Court's jurisdiction indistinguishable from that exercisable in a full-fledged appeal, which plainly is not the intention of the Constitution-makers."

6. In our view the. Jurisdiction of the High Court to interfere in matters of the kind involved in the present case is a very limited one and confined only to ascertaining whether the District Judge has not flouted the provisions of the relevant statute or has failed to follow the law relating thereto as laid down by the superior Courts.

7. No such contention was urged in this case. We are, therefore, of the view that the learned High Court Judge was justified in -dismissing the writ petition. The present petition is consequently also dismissed as being without any merit.