Protected licensee status under rent law barred eviction under co-operative society jurisdiction, with remedy confined to rent legislation.

Section 15A of the Bombay Rents, Hotels and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 was construed as conferring protected tenant status on a licensee in actual occupation of a flat on 1 February 1973, by legal fiction and with overriding effect. On that basis, the occupant was treated as within the special rent legislation, and the society could not bypass that protection by invoking Section 91(1) of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960. The court reasoned that the forum's jurisdiction depended on whether the occupant was a trespasser or otherwise outside Rent Act protection, and held that eviction could not be pursued under the general co-operative society provision where statutory rent protection applied.

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Issues: Whether a licensee in actual occupation of a flat on 1 February 1973 in a tenant co-partnership housing society became a deemed tenant protected by Section 15A of the Bombay Rents, Hotels and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947, and whether such protection barred eviction proceedings by the society under Section 91(1) of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960.

Analysis: Section 15A was construed as a protective provision giving overriding effect to licensees in occupation on 1 February 1973, and the related definitions of licensee, tenant, and landlord were read together with Section 14(2) to show that the statute created a protected tenancy by legal fiction. The member of a tenant co-partnership society was held to possess a transferable property interest in the flat, but that did not authorise the society to ignore the statutory protection conferred on a licensee who satisfied Section 15A. The dispute was treated as governed by the special rent legislation rather than by the general jurisdictional provision in Section 91(1), because the jurisdiction of the forum depended on the existence of the jurisdictional fact that the occupant was a trespasser or otherwise outside the Rent Act protection. Once the occupant was found to be a protected tenant, the society could not maintain eviction proceedings under Section 91(1) on the footing that there was no privity of contract between the society and the occupant.

Conclusion: The protected licensee could not be evicted by the society under Section 91(1) of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960, and the proper remedy lay under the Bombay Rents, Hotels and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947.

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