Sometime
towards the end of October 2020 the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
(MoHUA) surreptitiously uploaded on its website Draft Model Tenancy Act, 2020
and for the nth time invited suggestions/comments/views on it within 30 days.
Fully knowing how farcical this exercise has become it was not considered
necessary to give advertisements in the major daily newspapers in Delhi. No official
press-release was issued.
This
time all pretense has been given up. Point V of the background note on Model
Tenancy Act, 2020 available on the website of MoHUA states that “the MTA to be
applicable prospectively and the existing tenancies shall continue to be
governed by the respective extant rental laws of the States/UTs”.
The
object and purpose of the process that started in 1992 was to reform the rent
control laws all over the country and slowly bring all properties under general
law on Transfer of Property. If the existing tenancies will continue to be
governed by the respective extant rental laws of the States/UTs, then there is
no need for a new law. Why undertake this superficial exercise? Non-inclusion
of old tenancies makes any new law a useless piece of legislation. The housing
problem will not get resolved; dangerous buildings will continue to fall and
rejuvenation of old cities will not take place.
The
Central Govt. has the power to repeal all the existing State rent control laws
as the topic of Transfer of Property under which all rent laws fall is covered
by Entry 6 of the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution
of India. This will solve the housing problem in one stroke.
How
long does it take for a govt. to implement a policy? In the case of rent
control it is over 28 years and counting. The whole process that started in
1992 and in the case of Delhi resulted in the passing of the Delhi Rent Act,
1995 (unanimously passed by both the houses of the Parliament of India). It received
the assent of the President of India on the 23rd August, 1995. Mr. P. V.
Narasimha Rao, then Prime Minister of India and also the Minister of Urban
Development had asked the Urban Ministry to notify the Act. But bureaucracy
under the influence of tenant-trader lobby scuttled the process using the bogey
of Election Commission objecting to notifying the DRA, 1996; the truth is that
Election Commission had till then not even announced the elections. So the will
of one billion people was slaughtered to please the rich tenant-trader lobby.
Money bags must have changed hands for this wheeling-dealing. The BJP Govt. in
power at Delhi led by then Chief Minister, Madan Lal Khurana opposed the
implementation of Delhi Rent Act, 1995. This gentleman till the passage of the
Bill was leading an agitation for the Bill to be passed! The somersault over
the issue speaks volumes for the integrity of the peoples’ representatives in
power. The Govt. of India has once again succumbed to the powerful
tenant-trader lobby. Is the BJP led NDA only functioning for this lobby? Then, sabka
saath sabka vikas is a hollow slogan. Aam Aadmi Party in power at Delhi has
also till date not taken any stand.
Govt.
welfare policies as a rule help those who are senior citizens or super senior
citizens or those whose needs are the most. In the instant case even this basic
principle has been lost sight of and owners between 60 to 80 years of age have
been thrown to the wolves. They have struggled all their lives for their
properties to come out of rent control but now at the fag-end of their lives
they have lost all hope for justice both from the courts and the government.
The
need of the hour is for India to get another Prime Minister like Mr. P. V.
Narasimha Rao who has the courage to undertake reforms without playing partisan
politics.
Thanks.
Yours
sincerely,
Shobha
Aggarwal
President,
Committee for the Repeal of Delhi Rent Control Act
