1. ' This is a landlord's appeal. The only ground on which ejectment was sought from the disputed premises pertained to default in the payment of rent. It is unnecessary to go into factual details (some of which n ay only be helpful to the tenant), because the matter can be decided on a few simple pleas on the part of the respondent-tenant, as applicable to the alleged default. On the ground of the landlord's not accepting the monthly rent, which is claimed to be due from January, 1986, onwards, there being no written tenancy agreement, successive tenders, through postal money orders, were made on 26-3-1986 and 8-4-1986, on each occasion for the entire year commencing from January, 1986 and ending on December, 1986. Having failed in his efforts to pursuade the appellant-landlord to accept the rent, the tenant thereafter approached the learned Court of the Controller and started making deposits in such Court in July, 1986.
2. ' The only point which has been urged by Mr. Waqar Hussain in support of this appeal is that the Court deposit in July, 1986, was unaccountably delayed and ought to have been made earlier. The gap of near about three months between April and July, according to learned counsel, puts the tenant in default. This is incorrect. Section 10(3) of the Sindh Rented Premises Ordinance, 1979, clearly postulates that in cases where the landlord has refused or avoided to accept the rent such may be sent to him by postal money order or be deposited with the Controller. It is obvious that the quoted provision places tenders or payments through money orders and deposits with the Controller at par with each other. In other words, if one of such modes is adopted the other need not be. Further, as regards offer of rent through money order that is dependent for its acceptance by the landlord and mere tender is enough. It is also settled law that where, on making appropriate and due tenders through postal money orders, successively, it has become manifest to a tenant that any further tenders would not be accepted by the landlord, the former gets absolved from resorting to any more repetitive acts of the same kind. The question in such matters invariably is whether, following upon fruitless tenders of payment, any objective circumstances did come to exist whereby a reasonable and prudent man could have been led to believe that any further offers should lead to the same fate and thus be no more than an exercise in futility. Such result, upon evidence in a given case, may rarely follow on a single refusal and it frequently entails more than one similar failures to reach this conclusion. Yousuf Shah v. Ghulam Jam Khan (1975 S CM R 464), is an authority for the proposition that "mere refusal of the landlord on an earlier occasion does not absolve the tenant of his continued liability to pay or tender the same for each successive month."
3. (Underlinings are added). In Akbar Ali v. Rahman (1985 SCMR 1929), however, the Supreme Court upheld Money Order for 2 months' rent as augmented by an application for deposit.
4. ' On facts, it is shown that the tenant, in successive months and within time, made tenders through postal money orders for the whole of the relevant year and each effort failed. This, to my mind, may have been enough to reasonably engender an assumption that any further tenders would be futile.
5. Still, being well intentioned, instead of keeping quiet at that stage and plausibly taking shelter under the failed money orders, he went through the process of legal proceedings and started depositing rent in a Miscellaneous Rent Case. Such effort, manifestly, could have consumed some time and a period of two or three months intervening, though substantial, is not of such a drastic character so as to expose the tenant to default even if it be considered necessary that such deposit should have been made promptly after the last tender through money order, with which proposition of law, of course, I have already expressed reservations.In circumstances where lawful and valid tender(s) through postal Money Order(s) have failed and the tenant, consequently, seeks resort to making deposit in Court a degree of latitude is to be allowed in relation to moving the Controller for the needful, since legal proceedings, inherently, require some time to materialise. The earlier Money Order(s) and their failure would, unless shown otherwise, provide sufficient safeguards against delays in making Court deposits. The case of Fida Hussain v. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan (1972 S CM R 262), is distinguishable because no money orders, timely or otherwise, had preceded the deposit in that case and besides the tenant, admitting himself to be in default, pleaded condonation.
6. ' In view of above, I see no merit in this appeal and dismiss it.