Judgment.- These Second Appeals arise out of suits filed by the appellant against the respondents therein, for recovery of possession of the vacant sites after removal of the huts constructed by them and for arrears of rent. The trial Court decreed the suits, but the lower appellate Court, on appeal by the tenants, dismissed the suits, on the ground that the notices of termination issued by the appellant to the respondents were not valid in law. Hence these second appeals have been filed by the aggrieved plaintiff. Originally, the suit property bearing S. No. 17/2-A of an extent of 2 acres and 83 cents in Vedakaram Village belonged to one Doraiswamy Naidu. The appellant purchased the property in the year 1935, and he has ever since been in possession and enjoyment of it. According to the appellant, the respondents in S.A. Nos. 1775 and 1962 of 1963 and 371 of 1964 approached him in the year 1957 to permit them to take on lease the vacant strips of land on payment of ground rent at Rs. 1-8-0 per mensem. They were permitted to do so. Similarly, the father of the respondents in S.A. No. 372 of 1964 was permitted to put up a hut in the year 1959. The plaintiff-appellant contended that the respondents in the first three Second Appeals committed wilful default in the payment of monthly rent from May, 1960, and the respondent in the last Second Appeal ever since the commencement of tenancy. The appellant gave notices of termination and called upon them to pay arrears of rent. As the respondents failed to surrender possession and pay the arrears of rent, the appellant filed the suits aforesaid. The respondents resisted the suits on the ground that the vacant sites were poramboke land, that they were in occupation of the property and had perfected title by adverse possession by continuous occupation for more than the statutory period, that the alleged tenancy agreement was not true and that in any event the notice of termination was not valid, and further they would be entitled to protection under the City Tenants Protection Acts. Both the Courts below found that the suits property bearing S. No. 17/2-A was not a poramboke land but formed part of patta land, that the appellant was the owner of the suit property, that all the respondents were his tenants from 1957 except Varadappa Chetty who was a tenant from 1959 and that the tenants were not entitled to protection under the Madras City Tenants Protection Act. But, on the question of the validity of the notices of termination, the lower appellate Court, disagreeing with the trial Court, held that there was no valid notice, of termination according to law. On that ground alone all the suits filed by the appellant were dismissed. The only question, therefore, that arises for consideration in all these appeals is whether the appellant has given a good notice to quit; it is so called because the effect of it is, on the expiration of the period mentioned therein, the tenant must quit the premises. But it is in reality a notice to determine the tenancy. For a notice to quit, no particular form is necessary, but if given by or on behalf of a landlord, it must in substance and effect request the tenant to quit and deliver up possession of the demised premises at a particular time, and the tenant must quit and deliver up possession at the proper time. Woodfall in Landlord and Tenant (26th Edition), paragraph 2161, page 993 observes thus: "A notice to quit must be clear and certain, so as to bind the party who gives it and to enable the party to whom it is given to act upon it, at the time when it is given. Woodfall in Landlord and Tenant (26th Edition), paragraph 2161, page 993 observes thus: "A notice to quit must be clear and certain, so as to bind the party who gives it and to enable the party to whom it is given to act upon it, at the time when it is given. The notice must not be ambiguous." Justice Bayley, as early as 1824, in Doe D. Lord Huntingtower v. J. Culliford1, a case which is oft-quoted in the House of Lords and Courts of Appeal observed: "We are to look at the intention of the landlord........He intended to give an effective notice, and it is quite sufficient if the tenant understands what is meant." In Sidebotham v. Holland2, again a case which is frequently referred to whenever there is a controversy whether the notice given by a landlord to the tenant is valid in law-Lord Justice Lindley observed that the validity of a notice to quit ought not to turn on the splitting of a straw, that if hypercriticisms were to be indulged in, a notice to quit at the first moment of the anniversary ought to be just as good as a notice to quit on the last moment of the day before, but such subtleties ought to-be and were disregarded as out of place. In the same case, Lord Justice Smith observed as follows: "It cannot be denied that the law upon notices to quit is highly technical; but the technicalities, are too deeply rooted in our law to be now got rid of, and if any case had been found showing that a full six months’ notice to quit given, as in the present case, for the anniversary of the day of the commencement of the tenancy was bad, I must have given effect to it but, as no such case has been, found, I do not desire to add one more technicality to a notice to quit unless compelled to do so.‘" In Wride v. Dver1, Darling, J., observed: “What is the rule of construction of such documents as this?......‘The Court will give an interpretation to the notice consistent with the intention of the party serving it, if clear... .We must endeavour to give it a rational interpretation...........” In P. Phipps & Co. .We must endeavour to give it a rational interpretation...........” In P. Phipps & Co. v. Rogers2, Lord Justice Atkin observed: “A notice to quit may be the subject of express agreement; it may be required by law in the absence of agreement, as in the case of a weekly, monthly or yearly tenancy. However the necessity arises; I think that the principle expressed by Lord Coleridge, C.J., in Gardner v. Ingram3, is correct: ‘Although no particular form need be followed, there must be plain unambiguous words claiming to determine the existing tenancy at a certain time..... ‘Thus notice for a fixed day or at the expiration of the year of ‘your tenancy which shall expire next, after the end of one half year from the date of this notice is sufficient. It is to be noted that in such a case the legal or agreed period of notice is mentioned; and the date of the expiration of the tenancy is a question of fact which the tenant knows, or can properly be deemed to know.” In Hankey v. Clavering4, Lord Greene, M. R. observed:- “Notices of this kind, given under powers in leases of this description, are documents of a technical nature, technical for this reason, that if they are in proper form they have of their own force without any assent by the recipient the effect of bringing the demise to an end. They are not consensual documents; they are documents which must do the thing which the proviso in the lease says-they are to do; they must on their face and on a fair and reasonable construction do what the lease says they are to do. It is perfectly true that in construing such a document, as in construing any other document, the Court in case of ambiguity will lean in favour of reading the document in such a way as to give it validity as a document..........” While following the abovesaid principle, Evershed, J., in Dagger v. Shepherd5observed: “There is a further general principle to be applied. The Court must assume that the parties-to the contract of tenancy are aware of its terms, particularly of the provisions relative to its termination.” The principles laid down in these English authorities were applied to a case which went to the Privy Council from India. The Court must assume that the parties-to the contract of tenancy are aware of its terms, particularly of the provisions relative to its termination.” The principles laid down in these English authorities were applied to a case which went to the Privy Council from India. In Harihar Banerji v. Ramshashi Roy6, their Lordships of the Privy Council observed: “The principles governing the construction of a notice to quit laid down by English cases are equally applicable to cases arising in India and they establish that notices to quit, though not strictly-accurate or consistent in the statements embodied in them, may still be good and effective in law; the test of their sufficiency is not what they would mean to a stranger ignorant of all the facts and circumstances touching the holding to which they purport to refer, but what they would mean to tenants presumably conversant with all those facts and circumstances; and further, they are to be construed not with a desire to find fault with them which would render them defective but to be construed ut res magis valeat quam pereat.” As far as our High Courts are concerned, in Gnanaprakasam Pillai v. Vaz.7, Venkatasubbarao, J., after reviewing all the English authorities including the Privy Council decision just cited, observed that the notice to quit must be given a. rational interpretation. The same principle was followed by the Bombay High Court in Utility Articles Manufacturing Company v. Raja Bhadur Motilal Bombay Mills Ltd.8. On a review of the entire case law on the subject it is clear that the decision rendered by the lower appellate Court on the question of the validity of the notice is erroneous. It is clear that the notices have in explicit terms called upon the respondents to surrender and deliver up vacant possession of the respective portions-occupied by them on a particular date. The document normally contains the statement that the landlord intended the true relationship of landlord and tenant as determined upon some specified date. It is clear that the notices have in explicit terms called upon the respondents to surrender and deliver up vacant possession of the respective portions-occupied by them on a particular date. The document normally contains the statement that the landlord intended the true relationship of landlord and tenant as determined upon some specified date. It contains an unequivocal statement that the rights and obligations of the tenancy including the tenant’s rights to possession of the property in question would come to an end, on that date Learned Counsel for the respondents contended before me that once the landlord himself admitted in cross-examination that the tenancy was according to the Tamil calendar, the notices issued by him according to the English calendar month were invalid in law. The appellant stated in cross-examination that he did not know to read and write English, that his account was according to Tamil calendar and that the tenancy was according to Tamil calendar. He also said that sometimes Ponnuswami Naicker paid him according to English months also. The statutory presumption is that the lease is from month to month or year to year according to English calendar. But if there is a contract to the contrary, it lies very heavily upon the tenant to displace the presumption and to establish the definite contract. (See Ram Niwas v. Singh)1. In Aklu v. Emaman2, the Calcutta High Court has observed that in the absence of any written and registered lease, a tenancy other than manufactural or agricultural would be deemed to be a monthly tenancy and foe governed by section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act. In Carrara M. & T. Co. v. Charu Chandra 3, a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court observed that the alteration of the month of a tenancy might be proved either by direct evidence by proving a new agreement by which the month of the original tenancy was expressly altered or by circumstantial evidence. In this case, there is absolutely no evidence that the parties agreed in the lease or during the lease period that the tenancy would be according to the Tamil calendar, quite contrary to the statutory presumption of English calendar month. Casually, in the cross-examination this illiterate man blurted out that the tenancy was according to the Tamil month. After going through the deposition, I am not able to make any sense out of it. Casually, in the cross-examination this illiterate man blurted out that the tenancy was according to the Tamil month. After going through the deposition, I am not able to make any sense out of it. The notice is very clear and it shows that he was adopting the English calendar month. The respondents did not reply to the notice issued to them nor they have pleaded in their written statements that the tenancy is according to Tamil calendar month. In Trilochan Math v. Kalipada4, on similar facts, it was held that, as the defendant did not dispute as to what was the month of tenancy or on which particular day of the month the tenancy had commenced and when the notice was issued by the landlord the tenant did not attack that the date of the termination was not according to the tenancy, the notice issued by the landlord was valid and he was entitled to eject the tenant. Again, in B. S. K. Virajman Mandir v. Chuttan Lal5, it was held that the Transfer of Property Act prescribed no form of notice nor any particular word, that if the notice made it clear to the tenant that his tenancy has been terminated and he was required to vacate the accommodation at the end of the month of the tenancy it was a valid notice, that the object of the notice under section 106 was to give the tenant sufficient time to vacate the premises and such a notice should be liberally construed, that the real point in such cases was that the person on whom the notice was served should understand that his tenancy had been terminated and he was required to vacate at the end of the period of tenancy and that if the tenant attacked the notice on the ground of vagueness, he must show that its defective language caused him to misunderstand its nature. Therefore the finding of the lower appellate Court that the notice of termination was not valid in law is erroneous and contrary to the decisions of various Courts cited above. The appeals are, therefore, allowed, the judgment and decree of the lower appellate Court are set aside and those of the trial Court restored. There will he no order as to costs. No leave. V.K. ----- Appeals allowed.