The Union government has told the Supreme Court that implementation of the 30-year-old Delhi Rent Act (DRA) 1995 cannot be done by judicial order as the date of notification of the law is a political decision that must wait for the socio-economic and administrative environment to be “favourable”.
The Centre’s response came on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Shobha Aggarwal who questioned the dormant law which had remained in limbo for over three decades without any response from the Center taking notice. In January, the Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response and gave it more time in March, according to which an affidavit was submitted last week.
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in its reply said: “The decision to notify the Delhi Tenancy Act, 1995 involves balancing the difficult interests of various stakeholders and considering various steps and factors, all of which come into the realm of policy making by the government.”
Asking the courts not to interfere in this area by considering the petition, the affidavit said: “The courts must exercise judicial restraint in passing any such directions to the government as sought in the writ petition as this may cause serious prejudice to the principle of separation of powers recognized as part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India.”
The center says that no fundamental right has been violated
The response also stated that failure to notify the 1995 Act does not violate any fundamental rights.
“There is no right for a citizen to demand that a particular legislative policy be brought into force on a specific date,” he said, adding that in the absence of the new law, the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 (the old law) continues to function and provide a legal framework for landlord-tenant relations in Delhi, thus providing citizens with a legal remedy.
In its response, the Department of Immigration and Refugees cited section 1 (3) of the 1995 Act under which Parliament clearly vests in the Government the power to notify the Act. The article states: “It (the law) shall enter into force on the date specified by the Central Government, by notification in the Official Gazette.”
Referring to this open-ended delegation of power devoid of any specific date, the Center said: “Under Section 1(3) of the DRA Act, 1995, Parliament has expressly delegated the power of initiation to the Central Government to ensure that the Act is notified only when the social, economic and administrative environment is conducive.”
The reply said that in such circumstances, the courts cannot issue a writ (direction) to the government to give effect to the law when the legislature leaves the commencement date to the discretion of the government.
“It is up to the executive to determine the date on which the said law should come into force,” the response said, stating that the law is not “dormant” due to executive negligence but is undergoing active legislative development.
The government questions the maintainability of the PIL
The government also questioned the petitioner for approaching the Supreme Court without first availing herself of the remedies before the Supreme Court. However, it stated that if the legislation was not notified, the remedy would be before Parliament and not the courts.
“Appropriate accountability lies with Parliament,” the report said. “The judiciary should not substitute its judgment for that of the executive regarding the ‘readiness’ of the administrative apparatus to enforce the law.”
The 1995 Act received the assent of the President on August 23, 1995, and Advocate Agarwal contended that the Act should be deemed to have come into effect due to the inability of the executive to notify it.
The petition filed last year questioned how legislation passed by Parliament could be kept pending for more than 30 years, defeating the legislative will behind passing such a law to balance the rights of landlords and tenants and eroding the rule of law.
“Speedy implementation of laws passed by Parliament is a constitutional obligation of the government and a fundamental right of citizens under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India,” the petition said. The articles relate to the rights to equality, protection of life and personal liberty, respectively.
Agarwal pointed out that non-enforcement of the 1995 Act was against the government’s own policy as the Union government had been issuing model tenancy laws from time to time.
“In Delhi, the outdated Delhi Tenancy Act, 1958 is still in force due to the failure of the executive to implement the Delhi Tenancy Act, 1995,” Agarwal said, adding that several states have enacted reformed tenancy laws after the Union Cabinet approved the Model Tenancy Act, 2021.
The petition called on the court to immediately begin implementing the law and implement its provisions retroactively.
The petitioner also asked for guidelines to be put in place to ensure that future legislation does not suffer a similar fate due to “legislative paralysis”.
After the passage of the 1995 Act, the Delhi Tenancy (Amendment) Bill, 1997 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee which proposed the changes. However, the amended bill was never introduced in the Senate.
Later, in 2004, a Rajya Sabha committee recommended the passage of the Delhi Tenancy Act (Amendment) Bill, 1997.
The committee noted in its report that no healthy precedent had been set by postponing the implementation of the 1995 law. At around the same time, a petition was submitted to the Supreme Court by the NGO Common Cause to activate the 1995 law, but the court refused to accept it.
The 1995 law was intended to balance the rights of landlords and tenants, create modernized courts, and regulate rents more realistically than Delhi’s antiquated 1958 Rent Control Act.
A 1958 law was passed after Partition to protect vulnerable refugees from exorbitant rent hikes and arbitrary evictions. However, with rents remaining limited to the old levels of the 1950s, this has made it almost impossible for landlords to legally evict tenants. This has led to numerous disputes between landlords and tenants that have been pending in civil courts for decades. The tenants argue that they had a legal agreement regarding the rents with their landlords.
(With inputs from Paras Singh)
