Time to Pay Arrears — Extension Limited to Once

The Kerala Buildings (Lease and Rent Control) Act, 1965 does not treat default in rent as an irreversible sin. A tenant against whom an eviction order is passed for arrears is handed a statutory lifeline under Section 11(2)(c): deposit the arrears, with interest and the cost of proceedings, within one month or such further period as the Rent Control Court may allow, and the very order that throws him out is vacated. The hard questions are practical ones — what exactly must be deposited, from where the Court draws the power to enlarge time, and how often a defaulting tenant may invoke this indulgence before the Court is entitled to say enough. This note maps the grace period clause, the Supreme Court's reading of what "arrears" means, and the fault-line between the one-month rule and judicial discretion to extend.

The Statutory Grace Period: Section 11(2)(c)

Eviction for non-payment of rent under the Act is uniquely curable. Section 11(2)(b) empowers the Rent Control Court, after giving the tenant a reasonable opportunity of showing cause, to order eviction where the tenant has not paid or tendered the rent due within fifteen days after the expiry of the time fixed in the tenancy agreement, or in the absence of agreement by the last day of the month next following that for which the rent is payable. But Section 11(2)(c) immediately softens this: "The order directing the tenant to put the landlord in possession of the building shall not be executed before the lapse of one month from the date of the order of the Rent Control Court and if the tenant deposits arrears of rent with interest and cost of proceedings within a month of such order or such other period as may be allowed by the Rent Control Court, it shall vacate that order."

Three features stand out. First, the eviction order under clause (b) is not self-executing for one month — a built-in cooling-off window. Second, deposit within that window does not merely stay execution; it commands the Court to vacate the order, wiping out the eviction. Third, the one-month period is extendable — "or such other period as may be allowed" — which is the textual hook on which most of the litigation about extension turns. This curative scheme is the heart of the topic and connects directly to the wider grounds of eviction under Section 11.

The Pre-Condition: Registered Notice of Default

Before a landlord may even apply for eviction on the ground of arrears, the proviso to Section 11(2)(b) imposes a mandatory pre-litigation step. "An application under this sub-section shall be made only if the landlord has sent a registered notice to the tenant intimating the default and the tenant has failed to pay or tender the rent together with interest at six per cent per annum and postal charges incurred in sending the notice within fifteen days of the receipt of the notice or of the refusal thereof."

This is the first of the tenant's protections, and it is jurisdictional in flavour: an eviction petition for arrears filed without the prior registered notice is not maintainable. The notice must intimate the default and give the tenant a fifteen-day window to pay rent plus six per cent interest and postal charges. Only if the tenant fails within that window does the right to apply crystallise. The defaulting tenant therefore gets two distinct chances to cure — the pre-suit fifteen days under clause (b)'s proviso, and the post-order one month under clause (c). The interest rate fixed by statute at six per cent per annum is significant; it travels into the post-order deposit too, as discussed below.

What Must Be Deposited: Chinnamma v. Gopalan

The clause demands deposit of "arrears of rent with interest and cost of proceedings." The scope of "arrears" was settled by the Supreme Court in Chinnamma v. Gopalan, (1995) 5 SCC 5 (AIR 1995 SC 2272). The Court held that for the purpose of vacating an eviction order under Section 11(2)(c), "arrears of rent" means the arrears as found and quantified in the eviction order itself — not an open-ended figure swollen by rent that has fallen due afterwards up to the date the tenant moves to vacate the order.

The practical consequence is protective of the tenant: he need only tender the sum the Court identified as in arrears in the eviction order, together with the statutory interest and the costs of the proceedings, to reopen the order. He is not obliged, as a condition of vacating that order, to additionally clear every later instalment that accrued during the pendency. That later-accruing liability is governed by a different mechanism — the deposit obligation under Section 12 during the pendency of proceedings — rather than being folded into the clause (c) cure. Chinnamma thus draws a clean line between curing the adjudged default and the continuing duty to keep depositing current rent.

The One-Month Rule and Its Extension

The default period is one month from the date of the order. The clause then adds "or such other period as may be allowed by the Rent Control Court." This is a deliberate grant of discretion to enlarge time — the legislature did not freeze the cure at thirty days. The reason is plain: a tenant may be unable to assemble a large arrears figure within a single month, and a rigid bar would convert a curable default into a forfeiture.

The discretion is real but not unstructured. It is exercised by the Rent Control Court, it must be invoked while the door is still open, and it is calibrated to the equities — the size of the arrears, the tenant's bona fides, and the absence of prejudice to the landlord beyond the delay itself. Where time is extended, deposit within the extended period equally compels the Court to vacate the eviction order. The framing of this topic — "extension limited to once" — captures the older judicial anxiety that this indulgence might be claimed repeatedly by a chronic defaulter, an anxiety the Full Bench later addressed head-on, examined below alongside its sibling discussion of fair rent and revision.

Where the Power to Extend Comes From: Nasiruddin

Whether a rent court can extend time at all turns on the statute, not on any inherent equity. The governing principle is laid down in Nasiruddin v. Sita Ram Agarwal, (2003) 2 SCC 577 ([2003] INSC 28). The Supreme Court held that rent legislation is for the benefit of tenants, but the benefits can be enjoyed only on strict compliance with the statutory conditions; and crucially, "wherever the special Act provides for extension of time or condonation of default, the Court possesses the power therefor, but where the statute does not provide either for extension of time or to condone the default in depositing the rent within the stipulated period, the Court does not have the power to do so."

Applied to Kerala, this is decisive. Section 11(2)(c) expressly contemplates "such other period as may be allowed" — the statute itself supplies the power to extend. So a Kerala Rent Control Court, unlike courts under statutes that fix an unyielding deposit deadline, does have jurisdiction to enlarge the one-month period. Nasiruddin also warns that Section 5 of the Limitation Act does not graft itself onto such special deposit timelines; the power to extend, where it exists, comes from the rent statute's own language and is bounded by it.

Once Only, or More Than Once? The Full Bench View

The sharpest controversy was whether the Court could grant the extension only once, or repeatedly. An earlier line of authority read clause (c) restrictively: time could be allowed once, and after the expiry of the period first granted the Court was functus and powerless to extend again, so that a tenant who missed the extended date forfeited the cure altogether. This is the reading that the topic's title — extension limited to once — reflects.

That restrictive view was reconsidered by a Full Bench of the Kerala High Court in Karthyayani Amma v. S.N.D.P. Sakha Yogam, 2004 (3) KLT (FB). The Full Bench held that the Rent Control Court's power under Section 11(2)(c) to allow "such other period" is not exhausted by a single exercise: the Court can allow time more than once to the tenant to pay the arrears with interest even after the expiry of the statutory one-month period, overruling the earlier restrictive position. The rationale flows from Nasiruddin's logic — because the statute itself confers the power to allow a further period, that power is not spent on first use unless the statute says so, and clause (c) contains no such limitation.

The result, then, is nuanced: the indulgence is not rigidly capped at one extension. But this is a discretionary power, not a tenant's entitlement to indefinite delay; a Court can and should refuse further time where the tenant is using the cure as a tactic rather than a genuine effort to clear the adjudged arrears.

The Parallel Duty: Deposit During Pendency under Section 12

Section 11(2)(c) addresses the position after an eviction order. Running alongside is Section 12, which governs the tenant's obligations during the proceedings. Under Section 12(1), no tenant facing an eviction application under Section 11 is entitled to contest it before the Rent Control Court, or to prefer an appeal under Section 18, unless he pays or deposits all arrears of rent admitted by him to be due, and continues to pay or deposit rent that subsequently becomes due until the proceedings terminate.

Section 12(2) requires the deposit within the time the Court fixes, with a proviso that the time for depositing arrears shall not be less than four weeks from the order, and the time for depositing subsequently accruing rent not less than two weeks from the date it falls due. Section 12(3) is the sanction: if the tenant fails to deposit as required, the Court shall, unless sufficient cause is shown, stop all further proceedings and order eviction. The Supreme Court in P.U. Sidhique v. Zakariya, 2025 INSC 1340, reaffirmed the rigour of this regime, holding that a tenant must clear admitted arrears to contest or appeal, and that the Section 12 procedure need not be repeated afresh in an appeal challenging an order passed under Section 12(3). Together, Sections 11(2)(c) and 12 form a two-tier deposit architecture — cure the adjudged arrears to undo eviction, and keep depositing current rent to remain in the contest.

Interest and Costs as Inseparable Components

It is a recurring trap that the deposit under Section 11(2)(c) is not merely the bare rent. The clause requires "arrears of rent with interest and cost of proceedings." A deposit that omits interest or costs is an incomplete tender and does not trigger the mandatory vacation of the eviction order. The interest is the statutory six per cent per annum that already features in the pre-suit notice under the proviso to clause (b), carried through to the post-order cure.

The cost of proceedings means the costs as quantified in the eviction order. A tenant who deposits principal arrears alone, expecting the order to be vacated, will find the deposit deficient. Because Chinnamma v. Gopalan fixes the arrears at the figure in the order, the safest course is to compute that figure, add statutory interest and the awarded costs, and deposit the consolidated sum within the one-month period or any extension the Court has granted. Precision here is the difference between reopening the eviction and losing the building.

Effect of Timely Deposit: Mandatory Vacation

The language "it shall vacate that order" is imperative. Once the tenant deposits the full arrears with interest and costs within the one-month window or any allowed extension, the Rent Control Court has no residual discretion to refuse — it must vacate the eviction order. The deposit is the condition; vacation is the automatic legal consequence. The landlord cannot resist on the footing that he would rather have possession, nor can the Court decline because the tenant has been a habitual late-payer, so long as the present cure is complete and within time.

This converts the eviction order under Section 11(2)(b) into what is, in substance, a conditional order: it springs into enforceability only if the tenant fails to deposit, and it is extinguished if he does. The structure mirrors the protective philosophy described in the overview of the Act — rent control as a shield for tenants who meet the statutory conditions, withdrawn from those who do not.

Practical Checklist for the Defaulting Tenant

Synthesising the provisions and authorities, a tenant facing eviction for arrears should approach the cure methodically. First, on receiving the landlord's registered notice of default under the proviso to Section 11(2)(b), pay the demanded rent with six per cent interest and postal charges within fifteen days — curing here avoids the petition altogether. Second, once proceedings begin, comply strictly with Section 12 by depositing admitted arrears within the four-week minimum and continuing to deposit accruing rent, on pain of the Section 12(3) guillotine reaffirmed in P.U. Sidhique.

Third, if an eviction order is nonetheless passed under clause (b), compute the arrears as quantified in that order per Chinnamma v. Gopalan, add statutory interest and costs, and deposit the whole within one month — or apply, before the period lapses, for "such other period" the Court may allow, a power the Court genuinely possesses per Nasiruddin and may exercise more than once per Karthyayani Amma. Fourth, never assume the indulgence is inexhaustible: discretion can be refused for bad faith. For the broader statutory setting, read the grounds of eviction and the fair rent framework alongside this cure mechanism.