1 IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA [ CIRCUIT BENCH AT PORT BLAIR ] *** SAT/5/2026 IA No. CAN/1/2026 Meraj Ahmed Vs Krishna Saha and others Mr. K.M.B. Jayapal … for the appellant October 05, 2026 [AKB] Item No. 2 1. Heard learned advocate for the appellant. 2. The impugned judgment and decree passed by the learned First Appellate Court in connection with Title Appeal No. 14 of 2020 is under challenge in the present appeal. By the impugned judgment and decree dated 21.08.2026, the learned First Appellate Court affirmed the judgment and decree dated 21.01.2020 passed by the learned Trial Court in Title Suit No. 11 of 2010. 3. Being aggrieved by and dissatisfied with the aforesaid judgment and decree dated 21.08.2026, the present appeal has been preferred at the instance of the appellant/defendant No. 5. 4. The case of the plaintiff, in substance, is that the original plaintiff had let out the second floor of the suit building to the original defendant for residential purposes. Subsequently, in the year 2004, a severe earthquake struck the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as a consequence whereof the suit building suffered substantial damage. In view of the condition of the building, the plaintiff consulted engineers, who advised that the 2 SAT/5/2026 existing structure be demolished and a new building be constructed in its place. 5. It is the further case of the plaintiff that, in the year 2005, he requested the defendant to vacate the suit premises on account of the dilapidated condition of the building and the proposed reconstruction. The defendant, however, sought some time to vacate the premises, which was acceded to by the plaintiff. In the meantime, the daughters of the plaintiff were married and, according to the plaintiff, they required suitable accommodation for their residence. Consequently, in or about May 2009, the plaintiff once again approached the defendant and requested him to vacate the suit premises so that the existing structure could be demolished and a new building constructed thereon, which would provide residential accommodation for his married daughters. 6. Although the defendant sought a further period of seven months for vacating the premises, he ultimately failed to honour his assurance. The plaintiff again approached the defendant in December 2009 and requested him to vacate the suit premises, but the said request was categorically declined. Having exhausted all other avenues, the plaintiff caused a notice to be issued to the defendant terminating the tenancy and calling upon him to deliver vacant possession of the suit premises. The defendant, however, neither complied with the notice nor vacated the premises. Consequently, the plaintiff was constrained to institute the aforesaid suit seeking eviction of the 3 SAT/5/2026 defendant from the suit premises along with consequential reliefs. 7. Upon service of summons, the original defendant entered appearance and filed his written statement, wherein he denied the material allegations made in the plaint, including the plaintiff's assertion regarding the bona-fide requirement of the premises for the residence of his married daughters and the proposed demolition and reconstruction of the allegedly dilapidated building. 8. During pendency of the suit, the original defendant died and his heirs/ legal representatives were substituted in his place and stead. The substituted defendants, upon receiving summons, entered appearance but did not file any separate or additional written statement. The appellant herein, being one of the sons of the original tenant/defendant, contested the suit, whereas the remaining heirs/legal representatives of the original defendant did not contest the proceeding, and the suit proceeded ex parte against them. 9. It is also material to note that, during the trial, the defendants did not adduce any oral evidence or documentary evidence in support of their defence. Nor did they advance any substantive argument to controvert or rebut the evidence and submissions placed before the learned Trial Court on behalf of the plaintiff. 10. Thus, the suit ultimately proceeded on the basis of the pleadings and evidence brought on record by the plaintiff, coupled with the defence already disclosed by the original 4 SAT/5/2026 defendant in his written statement. Upon consideration of the materials available before it, the learned Trial Court decreed the suit in favour of the plaintiff, which decree was subsequently affirmed by the learned First Appellate Court by the impugned judgment and decree dated 21.08.2026. 11. It is the principal contention of the learned Advocate appearing for the appellant that the notice dated 08.01.2010 purportedly issued under Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act did not specify the entire premises under alleged tenancy. Therefore, no notice of termination of tenancy was served on the appellant for the premises of second floor of the building situated in land Sy. No. 128 measuring 1132 sq. Fts situated at Aberdeen Bazzar, Port Blair Tehsil, South Andaman District occupied by him as tenant. It is further submitted that the appellant after his substitution in the suit, was denied a reasonable opportunity to file an additional written statement and to adduce evidence in support of his defence. According to the appellant, had such opportunity been afforded, he could have demonstrated that the alleged bona-fide requirement of the suit premises for the married daughters of the original plaintiff was neither genuine nor bona-fide and the suit had, in substance, been instituted with an oblique motive to secure his eviction from the tenanted premises. 12. Therefore, it is contended that there was no lawful determination of the tenancy and, consequently, no decree for eviction could legally have been passed by the learned Trial 5 SAT/5/2026 Court. According to the appellant, the learned First Appellate Court also fell into error in affirming the said decree. 13. We have carefully considered the aforesaid submissions in the light of the materials available on the Trial Court Record, which is available in Court. 14. The learned advocate for the appellant submitted that from perusal of the Trial Court Record it is evident that immediately after the substitution was allowed on 14.03.2018 the Court in hot haste proceeded to record the evidence. Therefore the appellants were deprived of an opportunity to file written statement in the suit. 15. It appears from the Trial Court Record, that on 09.03.2018, the heirs/legal representatives of the deceased original defendant, including the present appellant filed an application seeking their substitution in place and stead of the deceased defendant. The said application was allowed by the learned Trial Court and the applicants were accordingly substituted. It is, however, significant that, notwithstanding such substitution, the substituted defendants did not take any effective steps for filing an additional written statement or for adducing independent evidence in support of their defence. 16. It is evident from the record of the Trial Court that notice/summons was also issued to the appellant on 14.06.2018. Therefore the suit was adjourned on 11.07.2018, 17.08.2018, 27.09.2018, 22.11.2018, 23.01.2019, 26.02.2019, 15.04.2019 and 12.06.2019 for appearance. The case was thereafter proceeded with and was fixed for evidence. 6 SAT/5/2026 17. The record reveals that the application for substitution itself had been filed by the heirs/legal representatives of the deceased defendant. The substituted defendants appeared in the suit on different dates, including 11.07.2018, 17.08.2018, 12.06.2019 and 26.07.2019. However, the defendants did not file any additional written statement; nor did they take steps to adduce evidence in their defence. 18. In such circumstances, the contention that the substituted defendants were denied an opportunity to defend the suit cannot be accepted merely because the learned Trial Court did not fix a separate date specifically for filing an additional written statement. The conduct of the substituted defendants, viewed in the backdrop of the order sheets and the progress of the proceeding, does not disclose any curtailment of their reasonable opportunity to participate in the trial. They remained passive despite being aware of the proceeding and cannot, at this belated stage, attribute the consequence of their own inaction to any procedural irregularity on the part of the Trial Court. 19. There is another important aspect which cannot be overlooked. The original defendant, during his lifetime, had already filed a written statement and had disclosed his defence therein. Upon his death, the substituted legal representatives stepped into the proceeding in his place. Thereafter, they did not take any steps in the suit even to support the case, as per the stand already taken by their predecessor. Viewed from this perspective also, the plea that the substituted defendants were 7 SAT/5/2026 deprived of an effective opportunity to defend the suit does not merit acceptance. 20. The next submission advanced on behalf of the appellant concerns the alleged discrepancy between the description of the tenanted premises contained in the notice and the description appearing in the schedule to the plaint. It has been argued that the suit property was described in the plaint as the second floor of the building standing upon land bearing Survey No. 128, measuring about 1132 sq. ft., situated at Aberdeen Bazaar, Port Blair Tehsil, South Andaman District, with the boundaries specified in the schedule to the plaint. 21. We have examined the notice dated 08.01.2010 issued by the learned Advocate on behalf of the plaintiff. The notice, inter- alia, records that in 1983 the ground floor of the building was let out to the wife of the defendant for the purpose of running a textile business and that, subsequently, in 1986, the second floor was let out to the defendant for residential purposes. It further records that, after the death of the defendant's wife, the second floor remained in the occupation of the defendant as tenant. 22. On a comparative reading of the description contained in the notice and that appearing in the schedule to the plaint, we do not find any such material discrepancy or incongruity as would render the notice defective or create any uncertainty regarding the identity of the tenanted premises. The submission advanced on behalf of the appellant, therefore, cannot be sustained. 8 SAT/5/2026 23. The plaintiff sought eviction of the defendant also on two distinct grounds under Section 13(1)(c) of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Rent Control Regulation, 1964. One of the grounds related to the requirement of the premises for repair, addition and alteration, as contemplated under Section 13(1)(c)(ii); while the other related to the bona fide requirement of the premises for the residence of the landlord and/or members of his family under Section 13(1)(c)(i). 24. Significantly, the learned Trial Court did not accept the plaintiff's claim for eviction under Section 13(1)(c)(ii) of the Regulation. The Trial Court considered Exhibit-7, being the report of the Executive Engineer, but did not find the same sufficient to establish the said ground and, in the absence of any other cogent evidence, rejected the plaintiff's claim on that count. Thus, the Trial Court did not mechanically accept all the grounds pleaded by the plaintiff; rather, it independently scrutinised the evidence and granted relief only upon the ground which, in its considered view, had been satisfactorily established. 25. The principal surviving ground, therefore, is the bona-fide requirement of the suit premises for residence under Section 13(1)(c)(i) of the Regulation. In this regard we considered the plaint filed in the suit wherein it was specific case of the plaintiff that the daughters were temporarily residing at their in laws and therefore a reasonable requirement was made out in the plaint that the daughters did not have her own/other permanent residence. 9 SAT/5/2026 26. The evidence of PW-3, namely Seema Lall, the eldest daughter of the original plaintiff, also assumes significance. In her examination-in-chief, she stated, in substance, that her father had decided to make the suit building available for the residence of his three daughters. Her testimony, on this aspect, remained substantially unshaken in cross-examination. Nothing material could be elicited from her cross-examination to demonstrate that the daughters of the original plaintiff had any reasonably suitable alternative permanent accommodation available to them or that the requirement pleaded by the plaintiff was merely a pretext for evicting the tenant. 27. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the original plaintiff died during pendency of the proceeding and his heirs/legal representatives were substituted in his place and stead. The rights and requirements asserted by the substituted plaintiffs were consequently required to be considered in the context of the circumstances prevailing before the Court. The evidence on record, particularly the testimony of PW-3, furnishes a sufficient factual foundation for the conclusion that the requirement of the suit premises for residential purposes was genuine and not merely a device to secure eviction of the tenant. 28. The learned Advocate for the appellant has placed reliance upon the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Shiv Sarup Gupta v. Dr. Mahesh Chand Gupta, reported in (1999) 6 SCC 222, in support of the proposition that the requirement of the landlord must be natural, real, sincere and 10 SAT/5/2026 honest and must not be a mere desire or pretext for evicting the tenant. 29. There can be no quarrel with the aforesaid legal principle. The requirement of the landlord must undoubtedly satisfy the test of bona-fides and must be founded upon a genuine need rather than an artificial or fanciful claim. However, the applicability of the legal principle necessarily depends upon the factual foundation of the particular case. 30. In case of Shiv Sarup Gupta (supra), the Hon’ble Supreme Court was dealing with a factual situation in which the landlord had failed to satisfactorily establish the genuineness of the requirement. 31. The factual matrix of the present case is materially different. Here, the plaintiff examined PW-3, whose testimony regarding the intended residential use of the premises by the daughters of the original plaintiff remained substantially intact despite cross-examination. The learned Trial Court, upon appreciation of the entire evidence, accepted the requirement as genuine, and the learned First Appellate Court, upon independent consideration of the evidence, affirmed that finding. 32. Thus, the principle laid down in case of Shiv Sarup Gupta (supra) does not advance the case of the appellant. Rather, the said decision reinforces the requirement that the Court must examine whether the landlord's need is real, genuine and bona fide; and, in the present case, both the 11 SAT/5/2026 Courts below have undertaken such an exercise on the basis of the evidence available on record. 33. So far as the plea regarding determination of tenancy is concerned, the appellant has not been able to demonstrate any material error in the findings concurrently arrived at by the Courts below or establish any legal impediment which would render the decree for eviction unsustainable. The challenge, in substance, seeks a reappreciation of the factual findings recorded by the learned Trial Court and affirmed by the learned First Appellate Court. 34. Upon an overall consideration of the pleadings, oral testimony, documentary evidence and the findings recorded by both the Courts below, we find that the decree for eviction was founded upon a proper appreciation of the evidence. The appellant has failed to demonstrate that the findings suffer from perversity, misreading of evidence or any error of law. 35. In the circumstances, the findings concurrently recorded by the learned Trial Court and the learned First Appellate Court do not warrant interference in the present appellate jurisdiction. 36. No substantial question of law arises for consideration in the present appeal. Consequently, the appeal does not merit admission and stands liable to be dismissed. 37. Accordingly the instant appeal be and the same is here by dismissed as not admitted. 38. All connected application are also disposed of. 12 SAT/5/2026 39. Let a copy of this order along with the Trial Court Record be send down to the Trial Court immediately. 40. Urgent Photostat certified copy of the order if applied for be given to the parties upon payment of requisite fees. (Madhuresh Prasad, J.) (Prasenjit Biswas, J.)