The Allahabad High Court has ruled that the absence of a written tenancy agreement or the failure to furnish tenancy particulars does not oust the jurisdiction of the rent authority under the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Urban Premises Tenancy Act, 2021.

Holding that landlords cannot be denied access to eviction remedies due to technical lapses in documentation, the court said rent authorities are empowered to entertain eviction applications even where no formal tenancy agreement exists, according to a TOI report.

HC emphasised state legislature’s conscious decision to omit “fatal consequences” found in Central Model Tenancy Act ensured landlords were not deprived of their right to seek expedient eviction due to technical documentation failures.

With this judgment dated Dec 16, HC partly allowed writ petitions filed by Canara Bank’s branch office and others. The issue in writ petitions was whether rent authority, constituted according to the 2021 law, had jurisdiction to entertain applications filed by landlords in cases where a tenancy agreement had not been executed, if not executed, the landlord having failed to file particulars of tenancy with the rent authority.

Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal said, “This provision leads to the conclusion that jurisdiction of rent authority under the Act of 2021 cannot be narrowed down only in cases of written agreement and its intimation to rent authority. Had  the legislature thought of giving limited access to landlord or tenant to approach rent authority only in cases of written agreement or its intimation, then proviso to sub-section (5) of Section 9 would not have been there in the statute book.