Rules of Residence

A New Tenancy Act awaiting official sanction is meant to bring transparency, fix accountability and promote fairness in the rental housing segment. What are the salient features?

- Kiran Bhardwaj

AMONG the myriad issues raised by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic is the one to do with landlords and tenants in the National Capital Territory (NCT). Many of those paying rents were affected by salary cuts or job losses, which brought up demands for deferring/lowering rents, as well as evictions. That problem brought into focus the existing Delhi Rent Act, 1995, which provided for the regulation of rents, repairs and maintenance and evictions relating to premises and of rates of hotels and lodging houses in the NCT.

Now a new Model Tenancy Act, 2019, which is yet to be notified by the government, establishes a Rent Authority for regulating renting of premises in an efficient and transparent manner and to balance the interests of owners and tenants. It establishes an adjudicating mechanism for speedy dispute resolution and to establish Rent Court, Rent Tribunal as well as Rent Authority to decide issues with regard to landlord and tenant matters. The Model Tenancy Act is applicable, prospectively.

Delhi has been through numerous such Acts before. Earlier, the laws applicable to Delhi were the New Delhi House Rent Control Order, 1939; the Delhi Rent Control Ordinance, 1944; the Delhi and Ajmer Marwara Rent Control Act, 1947; the Delhi and Ajmer Rent Control Act, 1952; or the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958. It is a settled law in the judgments as reported in the case of Damadilal & Ors vs Parashram & Ors, 1976 (4) SCC 855 and