1. The petitioner, who is the landlord, applied to the Rent Control Court under the provisions of the Travancore-Cochin Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Order, 1950, or the 1950 Order for short, for evicting the respondent tenant from her building on the ground that rent had been allowed to fall into arrears. That court ordered eviction by Ext. P-1 on October 27, 1958. The respondent applied for a copy of Ext. P-1 for preferring an appeal. Before the period for preferring it expired, the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Ordinance, 1959, or the Ordinance for short, came into force on January 17, 1959. Under S.18 of the Ordinance, the appellate authority in respect of the decision of a Rent Control Court constituted thereunder is the Subordinate Judge, while under the 1950 Order such authority was the Collector. The respondent filed the appeal against Ext. P-1 on February 7,1959, before the Subordinate judge by virtue of the Ordinance. He prayed for setting aside Ext. P-1 on depositing before the appellate authority the arrears of rent accrued with interest and the costs of proceedings in purported pursuance of S.11 (2) (b) of the Ordinance. He had no such right under the 1950 Order. Overruling the objections raised by the petitioner Ext. P-1 was set aside by the order Ext. P-2, dated July 7,1959. It may be mentioned, that the Ordinance had been replaced by the Kerala Buildings (Lease and Bent Control) Act, 1959, which came into force on April 3, 1959, but this is not material for the present purpose. The petitioner took Ext. P-2 in revision to the District Judge who confirmed it by his order Ext. P-3, dated January 30,1960. This writ petition is to quash both Exts. P-2 and P-3.

2. The chief ground urged in support of the petition was that the proceedings for eviction instituted under the 1950 Order, ceased to be pending by the passing of Ext. P-1 before the Ordinance came into force and therefore S.30 of the latter could not have been availed of by the respondent for preferring the appeal to the Subordinate Judge under S.18 aforesaid. This will depend on the interpretation of the term "pending" in S.30, sub-section (1) of the Ordinance which may be extracted:

"All proceedings commenced or deemed to have been commenced and all actions taken or deemed to have been taken under the Travancore-Cochin Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Order, 1950, or the Madras Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1949, and pending at the commencement of this Ordinance shall, so far as may be, deemed to have been commenced or taken under the corresponding provisions of this Ordinance and be continued subject to the provisions of this Ordinance."

3. According to the respondent the period for preferring the appeal not having expired on the date the Ordinance came into force and an appeal having in fact been filed, Ext. P1 did not amount to a final disposal of the eviction proceedings which must therefore be deemed to be pending at the material time. S.18 (6) of the Ordinance, which reads:

"The decision of the Appellate Authority, and subject to such decision, an order of the Rent Control Court shall be final and shall not be liable to be called in question in any court of law, except as provided in S.20."

provides in effect, that the order of the Rent Control Court becomes final only when the appeal from it is decided.

4. It was argued for the petitioner that the termpending must be construed in a strict and literal sense as pending before a particular court or authority. Reliance was placed on the decision of the Supreme Court in Asgarali Nazarali Singaporewalla v. State of Bombay AIR. 1957 SC. 503, [LQ/SC/1957/19] in which the question which arose was under S.7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1952, which provided that all cases triable by a Special Judge under S.7 which immediately before the commencement of the Act were pending before any Magistrate, shall on such commencement be forwarded for trial to the Special Judge having jurisdiction. Though oh the date of the commencement of that Act the prosecution had closed its case, the accused had not yet been called upon to enter his defence and even his examination under S.342, Cr. P.C. took place later. In these circumstances the court ruled, that the proceedings had not concluded but were pending when the Criminal Law Amendment Act came into force. The question now posed before me is different and is as to the state of the proceedings in between the decision of the first court and the filing of the appeal against it and did not arise before the Supreme Court. I do not feel that the case furnishes an authority on the present question. Mohammed v. Regional Transport Authority, Trichur, 1957 KLJ. 829, [LQ/KerHC/1957/258] decided by M.S. Menon, J., as he then was, turned on the construction of the proviso to S.62 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, which reads:

"Provided that a temporary permit under this section shall, in no case, be granted in respect of any route or area specified in an application for the grant of a new permit under S.46 or S.54 during the pendency of the application."

An argument was advanced, that the application must be considered to be pending until the time for filing an appeal under S.64 of that Act was over. The expression "during the pendency of the application" occurring in the proviso was considered to be clear and the argument was repelled. In New Model Bank Ltd. v. P. A. Thomas AIR. 1960 Kerala 243, which was also relied on, the point arose under S.45-C of the Banking Companies Act, 1949 and was whether after the final decree and before an execution petition was filed, the matter could be deemed to be pending and it was held that it could not be. The decree having become final, the case is distinguishable.

5. It is a well-settled principle, that an appeal is only a continuation of the suit and by analogy this may be extended also to the decision of the Rent Control Court and the appeal therefrom. If so, the proceedings before the Rent Control Court and the appellate authority are continuous. Continuity implies that there is no break in the chain and if there is an interregnum in which the proceedings were not before either of the two authorities, they may well be regarded as in a state of suspended animation. I think this is the reasonable view to take and is the sense in which the term pending ought to be understood. This is not a meaning which the term cannot bear under any circumstance. In Blacks Law Dictionary the word pendency is defined as "the state of an action, etc., after it has been begun, and before the final disposition of it" and to the word pending has been given an extended meaning thus:

"an action or suit is said to be "pending" from its inception until the rendition of final judgment." Ramanatha Aiyars Law Lexicon, 1940 Edition, page 962 says:

"an action is pending the entire time from the beginning of the action until final judgment has been pronounced and entered up, for until final judgment there cannot be said to be a termination of the action and it is therefore still pending."

The termpending occurring in S.10 of the Civil Procedure Code has been interpreted, so as to embrace also the pendency in all stages of the litigation. In S.P.A. Annamalay Chetty v. B.A. Thornbill AIR. 1931 P.C. 263 the Privy Council observed:

"Where an appeal lies the finality of the decree on such appeal being taken, is qualified by the appeal and the decree is not final in the sense that it will form res judicata as between the same parties."

The following observations of the Kings Bench in Delbert-Evans v. Davies and Watson 1945 (2) All E.L.R. 167 may be referred to by way of analogy:

"There is ample authority for saying that during the time between the conviction of an accused person on indictment and his appeal to the court of Criminal Appeal the case is not ended at all; the case is still sub judice. The case is pending to use the expression which has been used in many cases and in many judgments, and the publication of improper matter may amount to a contempt of court."

I therefore feel justified in interpreting the term in a liberal sense so as to take in not only proceedings which have become concluded before the Rent Control Court, but also those in which the period for appeal had not expired and in which appeals have in fact been filed. The appeal before the Subordinate judge was not bad for any defect or jurisdiction.

6. The only other contention pressed before me was that the Rent Control Court and not the appellate authority had jurisdiction under S.11 (2) (b) of the Ordinance, to accept the deposit made by the respondent and to vacate the order for eviction. The above sub-section reads as follows:

"The order directing the tenant to put the landlord in possession of the building shall not be executed before the lapse of one month from the date of the order of the Rent Control Court and if the tenant deposits arrears of rent with interest and cost of proceedings within a month of such order or such other period as may be allowed by the Rent Control Court, it shall vacate that order."

It consists of two parts, the first giving a power to stay the execution of the order for eviction, presumably to enable the tenant to make the deposit envisaged by the sub-section and the second giving a power to vacate the order for eviction on deposit being made. Specifically and in terms the power is conferred on the Rent Control Court. But S.18, sub-section (5) of the Ordinance has provided, that the appellate authority shall have all the powers of the Rent Control Court including the fixing of arrears of rent. There is no express limitation on the exercise of the power by the appellate authority, but impliedly there must be a limitation which is inherent in its constitution or position as an appellate body. For example, it would not be open to it, to receive an application for eviction which the Rent Control Court is empowered to do so. Similarly the power conferred by the first part of S.11 (2) (b) relates to the execution of the order for eviction and must pertain to the Rent Control Court which is to execute the order. But the power of vacating an order for eviction on deposit being made, is a power which may well be exercised by the appellate authority. In this view the action of the appellate authority in vacating the order for eviction on the deposit being made cannot be impugned as devoid of jurisdiction.

7. No other point arises in this petition, which is therefore dismissed with costs. Dismissed.