The Allahabad High Court has declared five central provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Urban Premises Tenancy Act 2021 unconstitutional. A Division Bench of Justice Saumitra Dayal Singh and Justice Swarupama Chaturvedi struck down Sections 8, 9, 10, 38 and 42 of the Act holding that they conflicted with existing central laws and lacked the Presidential assent required under Article 254 of the Constitution.
Sections 8, 9 and 10 dealt with the payment of rent its periodic revision and the determination of revised rent by the Rent Authority in case of dispute. The Court found these provisions repugnant to the Transfer of Property Act 1882. The 2021 law had created a mechanism that allowed rent to be revised upward at specified rates and empowered the Rent Authority to fix new rents when landlords and tenants disagreed. The Bench held that this arrangement stood in direct conflict with the framework of the Transfer of Property Act which already governed the relationship between lessor and lessee.
Sections 38 and 42 which sought to give the 2021 Act overriding effect over other laws were also struck down. The Court ruled that these sections attempted to displace the established procedure under the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act 1887 read with the Uttar Pradesh Civil Laws Amendment Act without obtaining the necessary Presidential assent. As a result the older Uttar Pradesh Urban Buildings Act 1972 will revive to the extent required to fill the legal vacuum created by the invalidation of the five sections.
The judgment also set aside orders of rent enhancement and eviction that had been passed by Rent Authorities under the struck down provisions. Proceedings that had already attained finality without any challenge to the validity of the law were left undisturbed.
The 2021 Act had been presented as a modern tenancy law intended to balance the interests of landlords and tenants and to encourage investment in rental housing. In practice its rent revision clauses gave landlords a clear statutory route to increase rents at regular intervals and to seek determination of higher rents through the Rent Authority. For long standing tenants who had been paying modest rents under older arrangements the new law created the prospect of sudden and substantial hikes. The High Court has now removed that statutory pathway.
The decision does not abolish the entire 2021 Act. Only the five provisions have been declared ultra vires. Yet those five sections formed the operational core of the rent revision and summary eviction machinery that the law had introduced. With them gone the older protective framework of the 1972 Act returns in the areas where the new law has been invalidated. Landlords can no longer rely on the automatic or authority driven upward revision of rent that the 2021 statute had enabled.
The case arose from a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the 2021 law. The Court examined the legislative competence of the state and the absence of Presidential assent for provisions that conflicted with central statutes. Its conclusion is that the state legislature could not rewrite the rules of rent revision and eviction procedure in the manner it did without following the constitutional requirements for repugnancy.
For tenants in urban Uttar Pradesh, the immediate effect is significant. Arbitrary or formula driven increases that the 2021 Act had facilitated are no longer available. Disputes over rent will once again be governed by the older legal regime to the extent the High Court has restored it. For landlords the judgment removes a convenient statutory tool that many had begun to use. The larger question the ruling leaves open is whether the state will now attempt to re enact similar provisions with the required constitutional safeguards or whether the protective orientation of the 1972 law will continue to shape urban tenancy relations in the state.
