Soon thereafter, the appellants filed a suit for eviction, being title Suit No.667/2013 against the respondent-tenant for non-payment of rent. The respondent, aggrieved, by the same preferred a Civil Revision before the High Court and in terms of the judgment dated 21.08.2019, the High Court set aside the judgment dated 11.09.2018 and granted liberty to the respondent- tenant to file an application under Section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963 explaining the circumstances causing the delay for the purpose with the prayer for condonation of delay in support of the application under Sections 7(1) and 7(2) of the said Act already filed. — Any appeal or any application, other than an application under any of the provisions of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908), may be admitted after the prescribed period if the appellant or the applicant satisfies the court that he had sufficient cause for not preferring the appeal or making the application within such period. Section 7 of the West Bengal Premises Tenancy Act, 1997 “ 7. – (1) (a) On a proceeding being instituted by the landlord for eviction on any of the grounds referred to in section 6, the tenant shall, subject to the provisions of sub-section (2) of this section, pay to the landlord or deposit with the Controller all arrears of rent, calculated at the rate at which it was last paid and up to the end of the month previous to that in which the payment is made together with interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum. On receipt of the application, the Controller shall, having regard to the rate at which rent was last paid and the period for which default may have been made by the tenant, make, as soon as possible within a period not exceeding one year, an order specifying the amount, if any, due from the tenant and, thereupon, the tenant shall, within one month of the date of such order, pay to the landlord the amount so specified in the order: Provided that having regard to the circumstances of the case, an extension of time may be granted by the Controller only once and the period of such extension shall not exceed two months.” Arguments of learned counsel for the parties and our conclusion : 8. Clause (a) of Sub-Section 1 of Section 7 provides for payment of arrears by the tenant to the landlord where there neither exist a dispute qua quantum of rent nor the time period involved. Sub-Section (2) of Section 7 refers to a scenario where there is dispute about the rent payment and even then, there is a bounden duty of the tenant to deposit with the Controller the amount admitted by him due from him together with the application of determination of rent payable.
In view thereof, tenant will not be able to take recourse to Section 5 of the Limitation Act as it is not an application alone which is required to be filed by the tenant but the tenant has to deposit admitted arrears of rent as well.” 14. It is, however, conceded that the said judgment has been referred to by Two-Judges Bench in Bijay Kumar Singh case. We have no doubt over the proposition that though generally the Limitation Act is applicable to the provisions of the said Act in view of Section 40 of the said Act, if there is a lesser time period specified as limitation in the said Act, then the provisions of the Limitation Act cannot be used to expand the same. The tenant is, thus, required to deposit all arrears of rent where there is no dispute on the admitted amount of rent and even in case of a dispute. We have also been given a statement of arrears of rent, which would show that for 142 months i.e., from February 2005 till filing of the petition under Section 7 of the said Act in December, 2016, rent was not paid and even thereafter arrears has not been paid as per the admitted rent of Rs.352 per month. From January, 2017 till the dismissal of Section 7 petition in September, 2018 21 X 352/- 7,392 3.
