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The Madras High Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Rights and Responsibilities of Landlords and Tenants Act, 2017 that was enacted on the lines of a model Tenancy Act circulated by the Centre to all States in alignment with its ‘Housing for All’ policy.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy said, though the 2017 enactment traces its source to List III (concurrent list) and not List II (State list) of Schedule VII to the Constitution, it was not repugnant to any of the existing Central laws.
Disposing of a batch of writ petitions filed by both tenants as well as landlords challenging almost all provisions of the 2017 law, the judges said, overall, they did not find any illegality in any of the provisions under challenge except for the necessity to read down Sections 4 and 4-A of the Act.
The Bench ordered that Section 4, which insists on mandatory registration of tenancy agreements with Rent Authorities appointed by the Collectors, and Section 4-A, dealing with the effects of non registration of such agreements, should be restricted to the scope of the Act and not allowed to operate beyond it.
Authoring the verdict, Justice Chakravarthy said, the language in which the two sections were couched make it appear as if they were general in nature and exceed the purpose for which they had been been introduced by the legislature. Therefore, it was essential to read them down.
“Section 4(1) which opens with the phrase ‘Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or any other law for the time being in force’ is hereby read down to mean ‘For the purposes of this Act’ and the same would control the rest of the provisions in Section 4,” the Bench held.
Similarly, Section 4-A which opens up as ‘No document required to be registered under Section 4(3) shall, unless it has been registered...’ is read down to mean as: For the purposes of this Act, no document required to be registered under Section 4(3) shall, unless it has been registered...,’ the judges ordered.
Apart from reading down the two provisions, the judges agreed with Advocate General P.S. Raman that none of the provisions of the 2017 Act were repugnant either to the Transfer of Property Act of 1882, the Registration Act of 1908, the Specific Relief Act of 1963 or the Hindu Succession Act of 1956.
The Bench said, the 2017 Act had been brought into force from 2019 onwards after repealing the Tamilnadu Buildings (Lease & Rent Control) Act, 1960 which was abused by unscrupulous tenants to frustrate the landlords though it had the avowed object of protecting the tenants and providing affordable housing.
It was only because of misuse of the 1960 law, the legislature had now shifted the focus from the ‘control regime’ to ‘contractual regime,’ the judges said. Though it was argued that the new law could be abused by unscrupulous landlords, the Bench said, such hypothetical possibility could not be a reason to strike it down.
“Mere possibility of an abuse cannot render a legislation invalid,” the Bench observed and recalled the Supreme Court to have said, the constitutionality of a legislation must be adjudged by the generality of its provisions and not by its crudities, inequities or by the possiblities of abuse of any of its provisions.
