Non-payment of rent is the oldest and most litigated ground of eviction, yet under the Rajasthan Rent Control Act, 2001 a landlord cannot evict on default merely by proving that money is owed. The Act front-loads the burden onto the landlord: he must have disclosed his bank account, must serve a registered demand notice, and must wait out the statutory cure period before the Rent Tribunal acquires jurisdiction even to entertain the petition. Section 9(a) therefore reads less like a sword and more like an obstacle course. This note maps that course — what counts as a default, what "tender" means, the bank-disclosure and notice provisos, the role of deposit under Section 8, and how the Tribunal treats a tenant who pays late but pays.
Where default sits in the Act
The Rajasthan Rent Control Act, 2001 replaced the older Rajasthan Premises (Control of Rent and Eviction) Act, 1950, consciously rebalancing the relationship in the landlord's favour while retaining controlled grounds of eviction. The grounds of eviction are exhaustively catalogued in Section 9, and default in rent is the very first of them — clause (a). The structure matters: Section 5 fixes how and when rent must be paid; Section 8 gives the tenant an escape hatch where the landlord will not accept rent; and only then does Section 9(a) permit eviction for non-payment. Reading clause (a) in isolation, divorced from Sections 5 and 8, is the commonest error in default litigation. The Tribunal's jurisdiction under Section 9(a) is conditional, and those conditions are spread across the chapter rather than packed into the eviction clause itself.
Because the Act is a special, self-contained code, the general law of forfeiture for non-payment under Section 111(g) of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 is displaced for premises to which the Act applies. The landlord's remedy lies before the Rent Tribunal, not in an ordinary civil suit, a point reinforced by the Supreme Court in Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corporation, (2021) 2 SCC 1, which held that tenancy disputes governed by a rent-control statute conferring exclusive jurisdiction on a special forum are non-arbitrable and fall outside the ordinary civil stream.
What is default: the four-month rule in Section 9(a)
Section 9(a) empowers the Rent Tribunal to order eviction where "the tenant has neither paid nor tendered the amount of rent due from him for four months." Two features distinguish this from most rent-control statutes. First, the threshold is quantitative and absolute: the default must run to four months' rent. A single month's or two months' arrears, however irritating to the landlord, does not attract clause (a). Second, the clause speaks of rent "due" — meaning the contractual or lawfully fixed rent, read with the time of payment under Section 5. Until the rent for a month falls "due" under Section 5, no default in respect of it can be counted.
The drafting "neither paid nor tendered" is deliberate. Payment and tender are alternatives; a tenant who has validly tendered rent, even if the landlord refused it, has not defaulted. The four months need not, on the face of the clause, be consecutive — it is the aggregate of unpaid months that the Tribunal weighs — but the landlord must establish a clean account showing four months' worth remaining unpaid as at the date of the demand notice. Where the rent itself is disputed and is pending fixation, the safer course for the tenant is to keep depositing the admitted rent so that no arrears of four months accumulate while the dispute over standard rent is resolved.
Section 5: when rent falls due and how it must be paid
Default cannot be understood without Section 5, which governs the time and manner of payment. Unless the parties agree otherwise, every tenant must pay the rent by the fifteenth day of the month next following the month for which the rent is payable. So rent for January is due by 15 February; only after that does January's rent become an unpaid month for the purpose of counting default. This statutory grace built into Section 5 means a landlord cannot manufacture an early default by insisting on payment in advance unless the agreement so provides.
Section 5 also lists the permitted modes of payment: personal payment in cash, cheque or bank draft, direct credit to a bank account specified by the landlord, or postal money order. Crucially, the same section casts a duty on the landlord to disclose his bank account number and the name of his bank in the same municipal area, either in the rent agreement or by a registered-post notice. That disclosure duty is not a mere formality — it is the hinge on which the first proviso to Section 9(a) turns, as the next section explains. A tenant entitled to pay by bank credit cannot be branded a defaulter if the landlord never told him where to credit the money.
Tender: paying when the landlord will not take it
The word "tendered" in Section 9(a) protects the willing-but-frustrated tenant. A tender is an unconditional offer of the exact rent due, made at the proper time and place to the landlord or his authorised agent. Remittance by postal money order to the landlord at his correct address is a recognised mode of tender; so is a credit to the bank account the landlord has specified under Section 5. If the landlord refuses a valid tender, the tenant has discharged his obligation and is not in default within the meaning of clause (a), even though the money has not in fact reached the landlord's hands.
The principle that a refused-but-valid tender defeats a default plea is long settled in rent-control jurisprudence; the Supreme Court applied it in the cognate context of Mranalini B. Shah v. Bapalal Mohanlal Shah, (1980) 4 SCC 251, holding that a tenant who tenders rent which the landlord wrongfully declines cannot be treated as a defaulter. Tender, however, must be genuine and unconditional — a conditional or short tender is no tender at all, and a tenant who offers less than the admitted rent, or attaches strings, remains exposed under Section 9(a).
Section 8: deposit as a shield against default
Where the landlord refuses to accept rent tendered in the manner specified in Section 5, or refuses to grant a receipt, Section 8 allows the tenant to deposit the rent periodically and in time with the Rent Authority. The same right arises where there is a bona fide doubt about the person to whom rent is payable — for instance on the landlord's death, when rival claimants emerge. On such deposit the Rent Authority investigates and passes appropriate orders, and the rent is held in a personal deposit account for payment to the landlord or other lawful claimant.
Section 8 is the tenant's principal defence against a default petition. A tenant who keeps depositing rent with the Rent Authority, in time and in full, simply never accumulates four months' arrears, and Section 9(a) is never triggered. The statute also clarifies that the landlord's later receipt of deposited rent does not operate as an admission of the correctness of the rate of rent or other facts stated by the tenant at the time of deposit, so the landlord forfeits nothing by drawing the money. The interplay of Sections 5, 8 and 9(a) is thus a single mechanism: pay correctly under Section 5, deposit under Section 8 if obstructed, and default under Section 9(a) cannot be made out.
First proviso: the bank-disclosure bar
The first proviso to Section 9(a) is a powerful tenant safeguard: the ground of default "shall not be available to the landlord if he has not disclosed to the tenant his bank account number and the name of the bank in the same municipal area, in the rent agreement or by a notice sent to him by registered post, acknowledgement due." In plain terms, a landlord who never told the tenant where to deposit or credit the rent is statutorily disentitled from pleading default at all.
This proviso dovetails with the Section 5 disclosure duty and reflects the legislative judgment that a tenant cannot be penalised for non-payment when the very channel of payment was withheld. The disclosure must be of an account in the same municipal area — a distant or inaccessible account does not satisfy the proviso. For litigation strategy, the first question a tenant's counsel asks in any default case is whether the landlord can prove compliant bank disclosure; if he cannot, the petition fails in limine regardless of how long the rent has been unpaid. The burden of pleading and proving disclosure rests squarely on the landlord, since it is a condition precedent to the availability of the ground.
Second proviso: the registered demand notice and 30-day cure
The second proviso erects a further jurisdictional barrier: "no petition on the ground under this clause shall be filed unless the landlord has given notice to the tenant by registered post, acknowledgement due, demanding arrears of rent and the tenant has not made payment of arrears of rent within a period of thirty days from the date of service of the notice." Three ingredients must each be satisfied — the notice must be by registered post acknowledgement due, it must demand the arrears, and thirty clear days must have elapsed from service without payment.
The thirty-day window is a statutory opportunity to cure. A tenant who pays the demanded arrears within thirty days of service wipes out the cause of action; the contemplated petition cannot be filed. Because the proviso bars the very filing of the petition, non-compliance is not a curable irregularity but a defect going to the Tribunal's jurisdiction — a petition filed without a valid notice or before the thirty days expire is liable to be dismissed at the threshold. "Service" is reckoned from the date the notice is served, and a tenant who deliberately evades the registered notice cannot take advantage of his own evasion; refusal of a registered AD notice is generally treated as good service.
Counting the four months and curing late
Practical disputes turn on how the four months are computed and what happens when the tenant pays after the demand. The Act fixes the substantive threshold at four months' arrears and overlays it with the cure mechanism in the second proviso. A tenant who has allowed four months to lapse can still save the tenancy by paying within thirty days of the registered demand; the scheme thus penalises only the obstinate defaulter, not the merely tardy one. This is consistent with the protective philosophy the Rajasthan High Court has repeatedly stressed — that rent-control legislation, though it shields tenants, is not meant to perpetuate occupation by those who simply refuse to pay, nor to deprive landlords of bona fide relief, as observed in the Court's treatment of eviction under the Act in cases such as Ramswaroop v. Charanjeet Singh.
Where the rent rate is itself contested and a proceeding for fixation or revision is pending, the prudent tenant tenders or deposits the admitted rent and litigates the excess separately, so that the four-month default is never completed on the admitted figure. Counsel for landlords, conversely, must ensure the account pleaded is precise: an inflated arrears figure that bundles in disputed amounts can defeat the notice if the tenant pays the genuinely due rent within the cure period.
Burden of proof and procedure before the Tribunal
In a Section 9(a) petition the landlord must plead and prove three jurisdictional facts before the merits are even reached: that he made the requisite bank disclosure (first proviso), that he served a valid registered demand notice, and that thirty days passed without payment (second proviso). Only on crossing these does the Tribunal examine whether four months' rent in fact remained unpaid. The relationship of landlord and tenant must also be established; Section 9 operates only inter se landlord and tenant, and a petition by one whose title as landlord is not made out cannot succeed. The Rent Tribunal, though not strictly bound by the Code of Civil Procedure, must observe the principles of natural justice and give the tenant a fair opportunity to show payment, tender or deposit.
Evidence typically includes the rent agreement, proof of bank disclosure, the registered notice with the postal acknowledgement, and the rent account. The tenant defends by producing money-order receipts, bank-credit entries, or Section 8 deposit challans. Because the provisos are conditions precedent, a landlord who omits any of them cannot cure the defect by amendment after filing — the safer course is to issue a fresh compliant notice and start again.
Default distinguished from other eviction grounds
Default in rent should not be conflated with the other Section 9 grounds. Unlike bona fide need, which is discretionary and requires the Tribunal to weigh comparative hardship and the genuineness of the landlord's requirement, default is a relatively objective ground keyed to an arithmetical threshold and procedural compliance. It also differs from grounds such as subletting, change of user, material alteration or nuisance, each of which turns on tenant conduct rather than money owed. A landlord may plead multiple grounds in the alternative, and a tenant who defeats the default ground by timely payment may still face eviction on, say, bona fide need.
The remedies also diverge. Where eviction is decreed for the landlord's own requirement under the relevant clause of Section 9, the Act restrains him from re-letting the premises to a third party within three years, failing which the evicted tenant may seek restoration of possession from the Rent Tribunal. No such re-letting restraint attaches to an eviction grounded purely on default. This reflects the different policy concerns: the bona-fide-need restraint guards against pretextual eviction, whereas the default ground simply enforces the tenant's primary obligation to pay.
Practical takeaways for the exam and the Tribunal
For aspirants, the examinable core of default in rent under the Rajasthan Rent Control Act, 2001 reduces to a checklist. The substantive threshold is four months' arrears under Section 9(a). The two provisos are jurisdictional: bank disclosure under the first, and a registered AD demand notice with a thirty-day cure period under the second. Section 5 fixes the due date (fifteenth of the next month) and the modes of payment, while Section 8 lets the tenant defeat any default plea by depositing rent with the Rent Authority when the landlord obstructs payment. Tender — including a money order refused by the landlord — counts as payment for the purpose of clause (a).
The recurring trap in problem questions is to treat default as automatic on proof of arrears; it is not. Always test the landlord's compliance with both provisos and the tenant's resort to tender or Section 8 deposit before concluding that eviction lies. For a fuller map of how this ground fits the statute, read the introduction and the Rajasthan Rent Control Act hub, and compare default with the discretionary grounds discussed under eviction of tenant.
Frequently asked questions
How many months of arrears amount to default under the Rajasthan Rent Control Act, 2001?
Section 9(a) permits eviction only where the tenant has neither paid nor tendered the rent due for four months. Arrears of fewer than four months do not, by themselves, attract the default ground, though the landlord must additionally satisfy the bank-disclosure and registered-notice provisos.
Can a landlord evict for default without first sending a notice?
No. The second proviso to Section 9(a) bars the filing of a default petition unless the landlord has served a registered AD notice demanding arrears and the tenant has failed to pay within thirty days of service. A petition filed without this notice, or before the thirty days expire, is liable to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
What happens if the landlord never disclosed his bank account?
The first proviso to Section 9(a), read with Section 5, disentitles such a landlord from pleading default at all. If the landlord cannot prove that he disclosed his bank account number and bank name in the same municipal area, in the agreement or by registered notice, the default ground is simply unavailable, however long the rent has been unpaid.
Does paying within the 30-day notice period save the tenancy?
Yes. The thirty-day window in the second proviso is a statutory opportunity to cure. A tenant who pays the demanded arrears within thirty days of service of the registered notice extinguishes the cause of action, and the contemplated eviction petition cannot be maintained.
What can a tenant do if the landlord refuses to accept rent?
Under Section 8 the tenant may deposit the rent, periodically and in time, with the Rent Authority where the landlord refuses to accept it or to grant a receipt, or where there is bona fide doubt about who is entitled to receive it. Such deposit prevents arrears from accumulating and defeats any subsequent default plea. A valid tender, such as a refused money order, similarly negates default, as in Mranalini B. Shah v. Bapalal Mohanlal Shah.
Is a rent-control default dispute arbitrable?
No. In Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corporation, (2021) 2 SCC 1, the Supreme Court held that tenancy disputes governed by a rent-control statute that vests exclusive jurisdiction in a special forum are non-arbitrable. Default disputes under the Rajasthan Act must therefore go to the Rent Tribunal, not to arbitration or an ordinary civil suit.