RANGANATHAN, J.

1. This appeal involves the interpretation of Section 11 of the Jammu and Kashmir Houses & Shops Rent Control Act, 1966 (hereinafter referred to as the Act).

2. The petitioner is a firm of which Sohan Singh Madan is the managing partner. The firm was the tenant of the respondent in respect of portion of a building situated in Raghunath Bazar, Jammu, on rent of Rs. 200 p.m. According to the respondent, the petitioner had been irregular in paying the rent of the premises and had altogether stopped making payment of any rent from April 1, 1976 onwards. On November 26, 1976, the respondent issued a notice to the petitioner calling upon it to pay the arrears of rent (Rs. 1600). The notice also terminated the tenancy and called upon the petitioner to vacate the demised premises on or before December 31, 1976. This notice was first sent by post. The postman called at the address on December 7, 1976, and December 8, 1976 but, having failed to find there either the addressee or any person authorised to receive the notice on its behalf, returned it with the endorsement "left without address, returned to sender". Thereupon, the respondent caused a copy of the notice to be affixed to one of the doors of the premises in question in the presence of two inhabitants of the locality on December 9, 1976. No payment of rent was made subsequently by the petitioner. The respondent, therefore, filed a suit on June 16, 1977 seeking ejectment of the petitioner on the ground that he had committed three defaults, each in payment of two months rent, within a period of 18 months. This plea was accepted, and eviction of the petitioner decreed, by the Sub-Judge. This was affirmed by the District Judge. A second appeal to the High Court was also unsuccessful. Hence this appeal by special leave.

3. Section 11 and 12 of the Act, which are relevant in this context, may now be referred to. They read, insofar as is relevant for our present purposes, as follows:

"11. Protection of a tenant against eviction. - (1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other Act or law, no order or decree for the recovery possession of any house or shop shall be made by any court in favour of the landlord against a tenant.

Provided that nothing in this sub-section shall apply to any suit for decree for such recovery possession.

(i) subject to the provisions of Section 12, where the amount of two months rent legally payable by the tenant and due from him is in arrears by not having been paid within the time fixed by contract, or in the absence of such contract by the fifteenth day of the month next following that for which the rent is payable or by not having been validly deposited in accordance with Section 14.

Provides that no such amount shall be deemed to be in arrear unless the landlord on the rent becoming due serves a notice in writing through post office under a registered cover on the tenant to pay or deposit the arrears within through post office under a registered cover on the tenant to pay or deposit the arrears within a period of fifteen days from the date of the receipt of such notice and the tenant fails to pay or deposit the said arrears within the specified period.

12. When a tenant can get the benefit of protection against eviction. - (1) If in a suit for recovery of possession of any house or shop from the tenant the landlord would not get a decree for possession but for clause (i) of the provision to sub-section (1) of Section 11, the court shall determine the amount of rent legally payable by the tenant and which is in arrears taking into consideration any order made under sub-section (4) and effect thereof up to the date of the order mentioned hereafter, as also the amount of interest on such arrears of rent calculated at the rate of nine and three eights per centum per annum from the day when the rents became arrears up to such date, together with the amount of such costs of the suit as if fairly allowable to the plaintiff-landlord, and shall make an order on the tenant for paying the aggregate of the amounts (specifying in the order such aggregate sum) on or before a date fixed in the order(2) Such date fixed for payment shall be the fifteenth day from the date of the order, excluding the day of the order.

(3) If, within the time fixed in the order under sub-section (1), the tenant deposits in the court the sum specified in the said order, the suit, so far as it is a suit for recovery of possession of the house or shop, shall be dismissed by the court. In default of such payment the court shall proceed with the hearing of the suit.

Provided that the tenant shall not be entitled to the benefit of protection against eviction under this section, if, notwithstanding the receipt of notice under proviso to clause (i) of the proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 11, he makes a default in the payment of the rent referred to in clause (i) of the proviso to sub-section (1) of Section 11 on three occasions within a period of eighteen months."

4. On the terms of the above sections, the controversy in this case turned on the question whether the notice sent by the respondent by registered post on November 26, 1976 can be said to have been served and the petitioner can be said to have been in receipt of the said notice. If the answer to this question is in the affirmative, as held by all the courts concurrently, there is nothing further to be said. The contention of the appellant-tenant however, is that the statue postulates a factual service of the notice on, and the actual receipt of it by, the tenant and that this admittedly not being the position in the present case, no eviction could have been decreed.

5. Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, learned counsel appearing for the tenant submitted that the safeguards in Sections 11 and 12 of the Act are intended for the benefit and protection of the tenant and that, therefore, where the Act provides for the service of the notice, by post, this requirement has to be strictly complied with. He referred to the decisions in Hare Krishna Das v. Hahnemann Publishing Co. Ltd. ((1965-66) 70 Cal WN 262) and Surajmull Ghanshyamdas v. Samadarshan Sur (ILR (1969) 1 [LQ/KerHC/1964/234] Cal 379 : AIR 1969 Cal 109 [LQ/CalHC/1968/116] ) to contend that such postal service can neither be presumed nor considered to be good service where the letter is returned to the sender due to the non-availability of the addressee. He urges that, in the absence of any enabling provision such as the one provided for in Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, service by some other mode, such as affixture, cannot be treated as sufficient compliance with statute. In this context, he referred to the frequently applied rule in Taylor v. Taylor ((1875) 1 Ch D 426) that where a power is given to do a certain thing in a certain way, the thing must be done in that way or not at all and that other methods of performance are necessarily forbidden. He urged that even if service by affixture can be considered to be permissible, there are stringent prerequisites for service by affixture, such as those outlined in Order V Rules 17 to 19, of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) and that these prerequisites were not fulfilled in the present case. He pointed out that even under the CPC, service by such affixture can be recognised as valid only if sincere and vigilant attempt to serve the notice on the addressee personally are unsuccessful. In the present case, it is submitted, the evidence shows that the postman made no serious efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of the addressee even though the evidence showed that a servant of the petitioner firm was known to the postman and was present in the neighbourhood. He, therefore, submitted that the High Court should have dismissed the suit for eviction filed by the landlord on the ground that the requirements of Section 11 and 12 of the Act were not satisfied.

6. We are of opinion that the conclusion arrived at by the courts below is correct and should be upheld. It is true that the proviso to clause (i) of Section 11(1) and the proviso to Section 12(3) are intended for the protection of the tenant. Nevertheless it will be easy to see that too strict and literal compliance of their language would be impractical and unworkable. The proviso insist that before any amount of rent can be said to be in arrears, a notice has to be served through post. All that a landlord can do to comply with this provision is to post a prepaid registered letter (acknowledgment due or otherwise) containing the tenants correct address. Once he does this and the letter is delivered to the post office, he has no control over it. It is then presumed to have been delivered to the addressee under Section 27 of the General Clauses Act. Under the rules of the post office, the letter is to be delivered to the addressee or a person authorised by him. Such a person may either accept the letter or decline to accept it. In either case, there is no difficulty, for the acceptance or refusal can be treated as a service on, and receipt by, the addressee. The difficulty is where the postman calls at the address mentioned and is unable to contact the addressee or a person authorised to receive the letter. All that he can then do it to return it to the sender. The Indian Post Office Rules do not prescribe any detailed procedure regarding the delivery of such registered letter. When the postman is unable to deliver it on his first visit, the general practice is for the postman to attempt to deliver it on the next one or two days also before returning it to the sender. However, he has neither the power nor the time to make enquiries regarding the whereabouts of the addressee; he is not expected to detain the letter until the addressee chooses to return and accept it; and he is not authorised to affix the letter on the premises because of the assessees absence. His responsibilities cannot, therefore, be equated to those of a process server entrusted with the responsibilities of serving the summons of a court under Order V of the CPC. The statutory provision has to be interpreted in the context of this difficulty and in the light of the very limited role that the post office can play in such as task. If we interpret provision as requiring that the letter must have been actually delivered to the addressee, we would be virtually rendering it a dead letter. The letter cannot be served where, as in this case, the tenant is away from the premises for some considerable time. Also, an addressee can easily avoid receiving the letter addressed to him without specifically refusing to receive it. He can so manipulate matters that it gets returned to the sender with vague endorsements such as "not found", "not in station", "addressee has left" and so on. It is suggested that a landlord, knowing that the tenant is away from station for some reasons, could go through the motions of posting a letter to him which he knows will not be served. Such a possibility cannot be excluded. But, as against this, if a registered letter addressed to a person at his residential address does not get served in the normal course and is returned, it can only be attributed to the addressees own conduct. If he is staying in the premises, there is no reason why it should not be served on him. If he is compelled to be away for some time, all that he has to do is to leave necessary instructions with the postal authorities either to detain the letters addressed to him for some time until he returns or to forward them to the address where he has gone or to deliver them to some other person authorised by him. In this situation, we have to choose the more reasonable, effective, equitable and practical interpretation and that would be to read the word "served" as "sent by post", correctly and properly addressed to the tenant, and the word "receipt" as the tender of the letter by the postal peon at the address mentioned in the letter. No other interpretation, we think, will fit the situation as it is simply not possible for a landlord to ensure that a registered letter sent by him gets served on, or is received by, the tenant.

7. Much emphasis has been placed by the courts below and counsel for landlord on the attempt made by the landlord to serve the notice on the premises in the presence of the witnesses. While the counsel for the landlord would have it that the steps show the landlords bona fides, counsel for the tenant submits that the haste with which the substituted service was effected and the lack of any real attempt to find out the whereabouts of the tenant (who had, according to him, been compelled to be away at Amritsar for medical treatment) throw considerable doubt on the claim of bona fides. We do not think that any statutory significance can at all be attached to the service by affixture claimed to have been effected by the landlord. The statute prescribes only one method of service for the notice and none other. If, as we have held, the despatch of the notice by registered post was sufficient compliance with this requirement, the landlord has fulfilled it. But, if that is not so, it is so compliance with the statute for the land landlord to say that he has served the notice by some other method. To require any such service to be effected over and above the postal service would be to travel outside the statute. Where the statute does not specify any such additional or alternative mode of service, there can be no warrant for importing into the statute a method of service on the lines of the provisions of the CPC. We would therefore not like to hold that a "substituted" service as the one effected by the landlord in the present case, is a necessary or permissible requirement of the statute. It may be even an impracticable, if not impossible, requirement to expect some such service to be effected in cases where the landlord lives outside the town, or the State in which the premises are situated. If, in the present case, the landlord attempted such service because he was in the same town, that can only show his bona fides and it is only in this view that we proceed to express our findings in this regard.

8. Having gone through the facts stated in the various orders, we think that the landlord did his best in the circumstances. We are unable to accept the tenants contention that the mere circumstance that he had the notice affixed immediately on the day following the date of return of the postal notice is an indication of mala fides. What is material is that his evidence that he took the notice to the premises and had it affixed on the premises, as he could not find the tenant, stands uncontradicted. Indeed there is no doubt or dispute that the tenant was away from Jammu at the relevant time. The plaintiffs fathers evidence is clear and categorical that neither the tenant nor his servant was available. There is no suggestion made to him that he made no real effort to ascertain the tenants address even though a servant was there who could have furnished the same. In the written submissions, now filed, it is admitted that the tenant and his servant were both away at Amritsar though it is said that this was due to his illness. It is however stated that the servant was coming to Jammu every week to collect the dak and that the postman had failed to make proper enquiry. If this was true, the servant must have at least made enquiries and learnt from the postman that a registered letter had come and been returned and informed the tenant who could have taken steps to pay the arrears of rent. On the other hand, the evidence of the plaintiffs father and witnesses to the affixture, of the postman and of the tenants own witness shows that there was no servant on the premises. The evidence of the postman is categorical that there was no servant at the premises which was licked. He says he had learnt from enquiries in the neighbourhood that the tenant had not been living in the premises for the past few months. He admits that he knew there was a servant but says that the servant was also not there at the relevant time. He reference to the servant working as a pheriwala at the same place is in regard to the time when the was giving evidence (i.e. in December 1978). It is not the case of the tenant that the other partner, son of Sohan Singh, was available for service either. Thus the sum and substance of the evidence on record is that the tenant had gone away from the premises without intimating the landlord or neighbours of his correct address and without leaving behind any servant or agent to accept letters addressed to him. In this situation the landlord did the only thing he could.

9. We are quite conscious that the provision in regard to the notice contemplated by the statute is unsatisfactory and hope that the legislature would soon set it right. But, on the provision as it stands, we cannot but hold that landlord must be held to have complied with the statutory requirement by sending a notice correctly addressed to the tenant by registered post. Also, in the present case, we are satisfied - as indeed the lower courts were - that the landlord did his best to bring the notice to the knowledge of the tenant. He cannot be expected to do any more. His petition for eviction cannot be dismissed on this score.

10. We only wish to add that, having regard to the fact that the tenant had deposited the arrears subsequently, we suggested to the parties that they should try to settle the matter amicably between themselves but the submission filed by the parties after the hearing show that this has not been possible. We have, therefore, no alternative but to dismiss this appeal and we hereby do so without, however making any order as to costs.