Rent Control Acts in India

People staying in different cities in India from the past 10 years have all witnessed the rapid growth of their respective cities.

There are many issues/challenges that the city and the people living in the city face in this continuous development phase.

The concern here is we always fail to win over the issue or challenge we face and just try to by pass for the hour. And that’s the reason we are still developing.

Well, Lets address one such issue the city and the people of the city are facing, which is the motive behind this blog:

Unsystematic increase in Rents – This is a mammoth problem in any city which is accelerating in the phase of development.

Lets try to find out a way to control this problem by answering a few important questions. How to control the increase in rents?Is there any Law or Act which can help us out?If yes what does it say? How can it help?What are its flaws?I have tried to find answers for the above questions and succeeded in getting substantial information. Below is the information regarding the Rent Control Act.

What is rent control?

The practice of imposing a legal maximum (rent ceiling) upon the rent in a particular housing market, below the equilibriumrent is called rent control. If this maximum is above that market’s equilibrium rent (different rental housing markets may have different equilibrium rents), then the control is null and void. But if the rent is set at a level below the equilibrium rent, it will necessarily lead to a situation of excess demand or shortage. In a free market, prices (here, rents) would rise automatically filling the gap between the demand and the supply. But rent controls prevent prices from rising up to the equilibrium level.

Does India have a Rent Control Act?

The first rent control legislation in India was introduced immediately after the First World War in Bombay in 1918.It was followed by similar legislations for Calcutta and Rangoon in 1920. By the end of the Second World War almost all the major cities and towns in the countries were covered by rent control measures. All these acts, born out of the inflationary aftermath of the First World War, were conceived as purely temporary measures to provide relief to the tenants against the demand of exorbitant rent and indiscriminate eviction by the landlords due to scarcity of housesin the urban areas.As in other parts of the globe, the rent control laws applicable in various states in India are different with respect to various aspects and thus, a holistic analysis, though attempted here, is difficult.