Commercial lease user rights: flour mill activity was not a prohibited change of user without specific lease restriction or property damage.

A lessee of premises let for general commercial use cannot be restrained from installing machinery and running a flour mill unless the lease was limited to a specific purpose or the proposed activity is shown to be destructive or permanently injurious. Section 108(o) of the Transfer of Property Act applies only where the use departs from a specifically restricted purpose, and it also prohibits damage to the lessor's property. On the facts described, the proposed flour mill was not enough to establish prohibited change of user, and the installation of machinery was not shown to cause damage. The injunction suit therefore failed.

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Issues: Whether the tenant could be restrained from installing machinery and running a flour mill in premises let for commercial purposes, and whether such proposed use attracted the tenant's liability under Section 108(o) of the Transfer of Property Act.

Analysis: Section 108(o) of the Transfer of Property Act prohibits a lessee from using the property for a purpose other than that for which it was leased and from causing damage to the lessor's property. The first limb applies only where the premises were let for a specific purpose. On the pleadings and evidence, the premises were let for commercial purposes and not for any specifically restricted use such as only a food-grain shop. The proposed flour mill activity was held to be partly commercial and partly industrial in character, but that did not by itself establish a prohibited change of user under the first limb. The concurrent finding of the courts below that the installation of electric motor and machinery would not cause damage to the premises negatived the second limb as well. The categorisation under the Delhi Rent Control Act was not treated as controlling for a civil suit under the Transfer of Property Act.

Conclusion: The tenant was not shown to have committed a breach attracting either limb of Section 108(o) of the Transfer of Property Act, and the suit for injunction failed.

Ratio Decidendi: A lessee of premises let for general commercial purposes cannot be restrained from a proposed flour-mill use unless the lease was for a specifically limited purpose or the proposed user is shown to be destructive or permanently injurious to the property.

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