While consumer activists have gone to High Court seeking implementation of DRA 1995, the Standing Committee of Parliament has given its recommendations to be incorporated in the bill to amend the Act. Meant to balance the interests of the owners and tenants, the legislation, which was passed by the Parliament in 1995 and assented to by the President in the same year, was frozen by the Central Government after a section of influential trader-tenants, backed by the then Delhi government, protested against it. They alleged that the law was heavily tilted in favour of the owners. According to Shourie, the existing Delhi Rent Control Act 1958, as amended in 1988, is so much biased in favour of few old tenants that it has completely failed to give any protection to the owners.
People now dread the idea of letting out their properties.
The Committee has suggested some substantial changes to remove the perceived pro-owner tilt in DRA 1995. One of the Committee's proposal is to raise the ceiling of Rs 3500 per month of rent, under which protection of the rent law can be sought, to Rs 7500, for both commercial and residential properties. The Committee has also scrapped the provision in the original Act for compulsory registration of the tenancy agreement. All the rent deals, after the amended Act comes into force, would only have to be in writing with no need for registration. The above changes have elicited a mixed bag of reactions from the interested parties.