Non-Payment of Rent (Section 15(2))

Non-payment of standard rent and permitted increases is the most common ground on which a landlord seeks to recover possession, and Section 15 of the Maharashtra Rent Control Act, 1999 is the provision that governs it from start to finish. Far from being a simple eviction clause, Section 15 is a code of relief against forfeiture: it tells the landlord he cannot evict a tenant who pays or is ready and willing to pay (sub-section 1), forces him to serve a ninety-day notice of demand before suing (sub-section 2), and then gives the defaulting tenant one statutory chance to save the tenancy by depositing the arrears with fifteen per cent interest and continuing to pay regularly thereafter (sub-section 3). This article works through each limb, the leading Supreme Court and Bombay High Court authorities, and the traps that catch the careless tenant. Read it alongside the standard rent determination and revision rules that fix the sum due and the permitted increases that are added to it.

The scheme of Section 15: protection, then a cure

Section 15 is the operative provision on rent default under the Maharashtra Rent Control Act, 1999. Its structure is deliberately protective, and it must be read as an integrated whole rather than as four loose sub-sections. Sub-section (1) lays down the cardinal rule: a landlord "shall not be entitled to the recovery of possession of any premises so long as the tenant pays, or is ready and willing to pay, the amount of the standard rent and permitted increases" and observes the other conditions of the tenancy consistent with the Act. Sub-section (2) imposes a mandatory pre-suit notice. Sub-section (3) confers the celebrated relief against forfeiture, allowing the tenant to deposit the arrears with interest and survive the suit. Sub-section (4) gives the court an interim power to apportion the deposited money. The whole architecture reflects the philosophy that rent legislation is protective social legislation, designed, as the Supreme Court put it in Ganpat Ladha v. Sashikant Vishnu Shinde (1978) 2 SCC 573, to shield tenants from the misuse of the landlord's power to evict by exploiting his position. The base figure on which everything turns is fixed under the standard rent machinery; what Section 15 controls is the consequence of failing to pay it.

Section 15(1): the 'ready and willing to pay' shield

The threshold protection in Section 15(1) is unusually wide. It shields not merely the tenant who has paid, but the tenant who is "ready and willing to pay" the standard rent and permitted increases. The phrase imports a continuing state of mind and conduct: the tenant must demonstrate, throughout the tenancy, a genuine readiness to discharge his rent liability as and when it falls due. A tenant who hoards rent, ignores demands and pays only when cornered cannot claim to have been "ready and willing." The protection is also conditional on the tenant observing "the other conditions of the tenancy, in so far as they are consistent with the provisions of this Act" — so a breach of a lawful covenant, independent of rent, can still expose him to eviction on the grounds dealt with in recovery of possession grounds. Sub-section (1) therefore does the heavy conceptual lifting: it makes rent default, not eviction, the true subject of the section. The landlord's right to possession revives only when the tenant ceases to be ready and willing, and even then the tenant retains the curative routes that follow.

Section 15(2): the mandatory ninety-day notice of demand

Section 15(2) is the gateway every non-payment suit must pass through. It provides that "no suit for recovery of possession shall be instituted by a landlord against the tenant on the ground of non-payment of the standard rent or permitted increases due, until the expiration of ninety days next after notice in writing of the demand of the standard rent or permitted increases has been served upon the tenant in the manner provided in section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882." Three requirements are embedded here. First, the demand must be in writing and must specify the standard rent or permitted increases said to be due. Second, it must be served in the manner prescribed by Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 — which permits service by post or by tendering or affixing on a conspicuous part of the property. Third, the landlord must wait out the full ninety days; a suit filed even one day early is premature and liable to be dismissed. The Bombay High Court treated this notice as a mandatory pre-condition in Vinayak Narayan Deshpande v. Deelip Pralhad Shisode 2010(2) ALL MR 747, holding that strict compliance with the Section 15 notice requirement is essential before a non-payment eviction suit can be entertained. The ninety-day window is itself a cure period: the tenant who clears the demanded arrears within it removes the very foundation of the suit.

Section 15(3): relief against forfeiture by deposit

Section 15(3) is the heart of the provision and the tenant's most important protection. It directs that "no decree for eviction shall be passed by the court in any suit for recovery of possession on the ground of arrears of standard rent and permitted increases if, within a period of ninety days from the date of service of the summons of the suit, the tenant pays or tenders in court the standard rent and permitted increases then due together with simple interest on the amount of arrears at fifteen per cent per annum." The tenant must do more than clear the back-rent: he must add simple interest at fifteen per cent per annum on the arrears, and "thereafter continue to pay or tender in court regularly such standard rent and permitted increases till the suit is finally decided," and also pay the costs of the suit as directed by the court. This is relief against forfeiture in the classic sense — the tenancy is saved despite the default, but only on full and continuing compliance. The relief is mandatory once its conditions are met: the court has no residual discretion to evict a tenant who has satisfied every requirement, just as it had no discretion to refuse a decree where the conditions of the analogous Bombay Rent Act provision were satisfied, per Ganpat Ladha v. Sashikant Vishnu Shinde (1978) 2 SCC 573.

Running the ninety-day deposit clock correctly

The ninety days under Section 15(3) run "from the date of service of the summons of the suit" — not from the date of the suit, the date of knowledge, or the first hearing. Calculating this window correctly is decisive, because the consequence of missing it is the loss of the statutory shield. Within those ninety days the tenant must deposit the entire arrears of standard rent and permitted increases then due, together with the fifteen per cent simple interest. A partial deposit, or a deposit of rent without the interest component, does not satisfy the sub-section. Equally fatal is treating the deposit as a one-off: the words "and thereafter continues to pay or tender in court regularly" make the relief a continuing obligation. A tenant who deposits the lump sum within ninety days but then lapses into irregular payment during the suit forfeits the protection. The Bombay High Court Full Bench in Babulal Fakirchand Agrawal v. Suresh Kedarnath Malpani (Civil Revision Application No. 76 of 2010, decided 12 June 2017) addressed precisely this interplay, examining whether a tenant who complies with the Section 15(2) demand but fails to pay regularly under Section 15(3) can still be evicted, and reading the sub-sections as a connected scheme rather than mutually exclusive escape routes.

What 'regularly' demands: Mranalini B. Shah

The continuing obligation in Section 15(3) to pay "regularly" is not a loose exhortation; it has a settled judicial meaning. In Mranalini B. Shah v. Bapalal Mohanlal Shah (1980) 4 SCC 251, the Supreme Court, construing the cognate "regularly" requirement of the Bombay Rent Act, held that the word enjoins a payment or tender "characterised by reasonable punctuality, that is to say, one made at regular times or intervals." On the facts, the tenant had deposited rent on sixteen occasions at intervals ranging from two to four months and had never paid in advance; the Court held this was not regular payment and that the tenant had defaulted. The principle migrates directly into Section 15(3) of the 1999 Act: a tenant who clears the arrears but then pays in sporadic, bunched or delayed instalments cannot claim relief against forfeiture. Punctuality, not mere eventual payment of the total, is the test. This is why the careful tenant treats the monthly deposit during the suit as an inflexible discipline — a single pattern of irregularity can undo the benefit of the initial deposit.

Section 15(4): the court's interim power to apportion

Section 15(4) supplies a practical machinery clause that is easy to overlook. It provides that "pending the disposal of any suit, the court may, out of any amount paid or tendered by the tenant, pay to the landlord such amount towards the payment of rent or permitted increases due to him as the court thinks fit." The purpose is humane and pragmatic: where a tenant has deposited substantial sums into court under sub-section (3), it would be unjust to make the landlord — who may depend on rental income — wait until the litigation ends to receive anything. The court is therefore empowered, in its discretion, to release to the landlord such part of the deposited money as it considers appropriate towards the rent or permitted increases actually due. The power is discretionary ("as the court thinks fit") and interim ("pending the disposal"), and it does not prejudge the merits. It simply ensures that money lawfully due is not frozen for the duration of the suit, while preserving the court's ability to adjust the final account when the decree is passed.

Interaction with the recovery-of-possession grounds

Section 15 does not stand alone; it qualifies the landlord's general right to recover possession. The grounds for eviction are enumerated in Section 16, but that section opens with the words "subject to the provisions of section 25" and operates within the protective envelope of Section 15. The consequence is that even where a landlord can frame his case as one of arrears, he cannot obtain a decree if the tenant has availed himself of the Section 15(3) relief. The two provisions therefore work in tandem: Section 16 supplies the architecture of grounds for eviction generally, while Section 15 governs the specific consequence of rent default and supplies the curative deposit mechanism. A landlord who pleads non-payment must satisfy both the procedural pre-condition of the ninety-day notice and the substantive position that the tenant has not cured the default within the statutory window. For the full catalogue of eviction grounds and how bona fide requirement, nuisance and unlawful sub-letting interact with rent default, see the dedicated treatment of recovery of possession grounds.

The habitual defaulter and the limits of relief

Relief against forfeiture is generous, but it is not a licence for perpetual default. Indian rent jurisprudence has long recognised that a tenant who is habitually in arrears and chronically irregular cannot indefinitely buy his way out of eviction by depositing arrears at the eleventh hour each time. The mischief is obvious: habitual irregular payment of rent and permitted increases jeopardises the survival of landlords who depend on rental income, and the protective purpose of the Act was never meant to reward calculated default. Where a landlord's suit is founded not solely on non-payment but also on the tenant's conduct as a habitual defaulter, the mechanical deposit of arrears may not save the tenancy. The discipline imposed by Mranalini B. Shah — that payment must be punctual and regular — is the doctrinal hook on which courts hang this limitation. The lesson for tenants is that Section 15(3) is a one-time lifeline conditioned on subsequent good behaviour, not a renewable indulgence; and the lesson for landlords is that a careful record of repeated default strengthens a non-payment case beyond the bare arithmetic of arrears.

Why the cure exists: the Malpe constitutional backdrop

The balance struck by Section 15 — strong tenant protection coupled with a strict deposit discipline — reflects the constitutional learning of Malpe Vishwanath Acharya v. State of Maharashtra (1998) 2 SCC 1. There the Supreme Court examined the standard-rent provisions of the predecessor Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947, which had frozen rents at 1940 levels, and held that the freeze had become arbitrary and unreasonable under Article 14, leaving landlords without an adequate return to maintain ageing buildings. The 1999 Act is the legislative response, and Section 15 embodies its central compromise: the tenant is protected against eviction for a curable default, but he must actually pay — with interest and punctuality — to keep that protection. The provision is thus neither a tenant's charter nor a landlord's weapon, but a calibrated mechanism that honours the protective purpose of rent control while ensuring that the landlord's legitimate claim to rent is not defeated by chronic non-payment. Read with the permitted increases regime and the hub overview at Maharashtra Rent Control Act notes, Section 15 completes the Act's answer to the rigidity that Malpe condemned.

A practical checklist for both sides

Reduced to practice, Section 15 yields a short checklist. For the landlord: quantify the standard rent and permitted increases precisely; serve a written notice of demand in the manner of Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882; wait the full ninety days; and only then institute the suit, pleading the notice and the continuing default. A defective or premature notice is fatal, as Vinayak Narayan Deshpande shows. For the tenant: on receiving the notice, clear the demanded arrears within the ninety days if possible and avoid suit altogether; if sued, deposit the entire arrears plus fifteen per cent simple interest within ninety days of service of summons, then pay every subsequent month punctually until the suit ends, and pay costs as ordered. The two failures that most often cost tenants their homes are omitting the interest component and lapsing into irregular payment during the suit — the very irregularity condemned in Mranalini B. Shah. Section 15 rewards the tenant who pays fully and punctually and offers no shelter to the one who merely promises to.