Tenancy Agreement — Mandatory Written Agreement

The most visible reform of the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Urban Premises Tenancy Act, 2021 is its insistence that every new urban tenancy rest on a signed, written instrument that is then placed on an official register. Section 4 abandons the old culture of oral, undocumented lettings - the very soil in which the litigation of the 1972 Act flourished - and replaces it with documentary certainty: a written agreement, joint intimation to the Rent Authority within two months, and a unique identification number that fixes the bargain in the public record. Yet the section is deliberately framed as a regulatory and evidentiary discipline rather than a trap. As the Allahabad High Court has recently clarified, the absence of writing does not abolish the tenancy or oust the Rent Authority. This note works through the text of Section 4, its interaction with the Transfer of Property Act and the Registration Act, and the case law that governs tenancies which never made it onto paper.

The Statutory Mandate: Section 4(1)

Section 4(1) is the operative command. It provides that no person shall, after the commencement of the Act, let or take on rent any premises except by an agreement in writing, which shall be informed to the Rent Authority by the landlord and tenant jointly, in the form specified in the First Schedule, within a period of two months from the date of the tenancy agreement. Three obligations are bundled here: the bargain must be reduced to writing; it must follow the statutory First Schedule form; and the executed agreement must be reported to the Rent Authority. The reform is consciously modelled on the Union Government's Model Tenancy Act, 2021, which sought to formalise renting nationally. The definition clause reinforces the mandate - Section 2 defines a "tenancy agreement" as an agreement in writing executed between landlord and tenant for the purposes of letting the premises of landlord in consideration of rent payable, so the very vocabulary of the Act presupposes a written instrument. For the place of this section within the larger scheme, see our note on the introduction and object of the modern tenancy reform.

The First Schedule Form and What the Agreement Must Carry

The writing is not a blank slate. Section 4(1) ties the agreement to the prescribed First Schedule form, which standardises the particulars every tenancy must record - the identities and addresses of landlord and tenant, a description of the premises, the agreed rent and the security deposit, the period of tenancy, the purpose of letting (residential, commercial or educational), and the respective obligations for repairs and maintenance. Standardisation serves a dual function: it protects the weaker party from one-sided or hidden terms, and it gives the Rent Authority a uniform record it can index and adjudicate upon. The security deposit, in particular, cannot be left to private bargaining beyond the statutory ceiling - the cap is dealt with in our note on the security deposit cap. The substantive incidents that the form crystallises - who repairs, who pays which charges, what notice is owed - are examined in rights and duties of landlord and tenant.

Intimation to the Rent Authority and the Unique Identification Number

Execution alone is not enough; the agreement must be brought onto the public register. Under Section 4(1) the landlord and tenant must jointly inform the Rent Authority within two months. Section 4(2) is the fallback: where the parties fail to inform jointly, each is required to separately inform the execution of the tenancy agreement to the Rent Authority within one month of that default. Once the information is received, the Rent Authority under Section 4(5) issues a unique identification number to the parties and uploads the particulars, giving every registered tenancy a traceable digital identity. This is the architectural heart of the reform - it converts a private contract into an officially recorded relationship that the adjudicatory machinery can act upon. The body that performs this function, its constitution and its adjudicatory powers, is the subject of our note on the Rent Authority's constitution and powers. The two-tier timeline is deliberate: the joint two-month window encourages cooperative reporting, while the separate one-month window under Section 4(2) prevents an uncooperative party from defeating registration by simply refusing to sign the intimation. Either party can therefore unilaterally protect its position, and the unique identification number then anchors the tenancy in a tamper-resistant public record that the Authority can later invoke in any rent-fixation or eviction proceeding.

The Twelve-Month Residential Carve-Out

The Act tempers its formalism with a practical exemption. The proviso to Section 4(1) provides that in the case of residential tenancies for a period of less than twelve months, the landlord and tenant shall not be required to inform the Rent Authority about such tenancy. Short-term residential lettings - student lodgings, temporary postings, paying-guest arrangements - are thus relieved of the intimation burden. It is important to read the carve-out precisely: it dispenses only with the reporting obligation, not with the existence of the tenancy or the writing requirement as a matter of good practice. The exemption is also confined to residential tenancies; commercial and educational lettings of any duration remain within the reporting net. This dovetails with the definitional architecture of "premises" and the residential/commercial divide explained in definitions of premises, tenant and landlord.

Existing Tenancies on the Date of Commencement

The Act could not ignore the vast stock of tenancies already running when it came into force. Section 4(3) addresses transition: where a tenancy subsists on the date of commencement of the Act, the parties are expected to enter into a written agreement and inform the Rent Authority within three months of commencement. The transitional window is longer than the ordinary two-month intimation period precisely because pre-existing arrangements often have no writing at all and must first be reduced to a document. The scheme is prospective in spirit - it seeks to migrate old, undocumented relationships into the new register rather than to invalidate them retrospectively. How far the Act actually reaches over older arrangements, and the territorial trigger for its operation, are taken up in application to notified urban areas.

Retention of the Original and the Writing Discipline Down the Chain

The writing discipline does not end at execution. Section 12 requires the parties to retain duplicate signed original copies of the tenancy agreement, so that each side holds primary documentary proof of the bargain and its registered particulars. The same insistence on a fresh written instrument runs down the tenancy chain: Section 7 restricts sub-letting and assignment, requiring a supplementary written agreement between the landlord, the tenant and the sub-tenant before any part of the premises is sub-let or the tenancy is assigned. Read together, Sections 4, 7 and 12 establish a continuous paper trail - every alteration in the tenancy structure must be documented and, where applicable, reported - so that the Rent Authority's register remains an accurate mirror of who holds what, on what terms, and for how long. The duration that the writing fixes is itself governed by Section 5, which leaves the period of tenancy to the parties' agreement as specified in the instrument.

When There Is No Writing: Does the Rent Authority Lose Jurisdiction?

The decisive question for litigation is what happens when parties simply ignore Section 4. Is the writing requirement a jurisdictional precondition, so that an oral or unreported tenancy falls outside the Act altogether? The Allahabad High Court answered this squarely in Akhilesh Kumar v. Sanjay Sahgal, Neutral Citation 2026:AHC:116349 (Srivastava J.). The Court held that Section 4 is regulatory and evidentiary in character, intended to formalise tenancy arrangements, introduce documentary certainty and strengthen institutional record-keeping - it is not a provision creating a jurisdictional precondition. Consequently, the absence of a written tenancy agreement does not, by itself, denude the Rent Authority of jurisdiction where the tenancy relationship is admitted or otherwise established. Oral, month-to-month or unwritten tenancies are therefore not excluded from the Act's ambit merely because they were never reduced to writing or reported. The ruling protects tenants and landlords alike from the harsh consequence of a complete statutory exclusion for procedural non-compliance, while preserving the Authority's adjudicatory reach.

Proving an Unwritten Tenancy: Conduct and Collateral Evidence

If an oral tenancy still falls within the Act, how is its existence proved? The general law supplies the answer. In M/s Park Street Properties (Pvt) Ltd v. Dipak Kumar Singh, (2016) 9 SCC 268 (AIR 2016 SC 4038), the Supreme Court held that in the absence of a registered instrument, what is deemed to be created is a month-to-month tenancy, and that courts are not precluded from determining the factum of tenancy from the other evidence on record as well as the conduct of the parties. An unregistered agreement may be admitted to prove the fact of the tenancy and the nature of possession, even though its terms cannot derogate from the statutory protections of Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. Rent receipts, correspondence, delivery of possession and the parties' admitted course of dealing thus suffice to establish the relationship. This evidentiary latitude is the practical complement to Akhilesh Kumar: the Rent Authority retains jurisdiction, and the unwritten bargain can still be proved.

The Registration Act, Section 107 TPA and the Limits of an Unregistered Lease

The writing requirement must be located within the wider law on how leases are made. Section 107 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 provides that a lease of immovable property from year to year, or for any term exceeding one year, or reserving a yearly rent, can be made only by a registered instrument; all other leases may be made by a registered instrument or by oral agreement accompanied by delivery of possession. In Samir Mukherjee v. Davinder K. Bajaj, (2001) 5 SCC 259, the Supreme Court held that a lease from year to year, to be valid, cannot be created orally and must be embodied in a registered document. The interaction of the Registration Act with the TPA was crystallised in Anthony v. K.C. Ittoop & Sons, (2000) 6 SCC 394: a compulsorily registrable lease made by an unregistered instrument cannot create a contractual lease because of the combined operation of Sections 17 and 49 of the Registration Act, 1908 and Section 107 of the TPA - yet the existence of a lease, and a monthly tenancy, may still be presumed from the conduct of the parties and the fact of possession. A long-term written tenancy under Section 4 of the 2021 Act that crosses the one-year threshold therefore still attracts the registration requirement of the general law.

Consequences of Non-Compliance With Section 4

What, then, is the price of ignoring Section 4? The combined effect of the authorities is that non-compliance carries evidentiary and procedural consequences rather than the nuclear consequence of voiding the relationship. First, a party without a written, registered agreement loses the certainty and the documentary advantage that the register confers and must instead prove the tenancy through conduct and collateral evidence as in Park Street Properties. Second, an unregistered instrument crossing the one-year threshold cannot operate as a lease for its full term and, following Anthony and Samir Mukherjee, is read down to a monthly tenancy governed by Section 106 of the TPA. Third, and crucially, under Akhilesh Kumar v. Sanjay Sahgal the Rent Authority's jurisdiction survives where the relationship is admitted or proved. The statutory design thus nudges parties towards documentation through the loss of evidentiary comfort, without slamming the courthouse door on those who failed to comply. This calibrated approach reflects a conscious legislative choice. Had the Act treated writing as a condition of validity, the consequence would have been perverse - the very tenants the reform sought to protect would have been the first to be evicted as trespassers the moment a landlord pointed to the absence of a registered instrument. By keeping the relationship alive and the Authority's jurisdiction intact, while attaching documentary and evidentiary advantages to compliance, the Act secures formalisation as an incentive rather than a penalty. The burden of proving an unwritten tenancy simply shifts onto the party asserting it, who must then marshal the conduct-based and collateral evidence that Park Street Properties permits.

Practical and Examination Takeaways

For the judiciary and CLAT-PG aspirant, four propositions should be carried into the hall. One: Section 4(1) makes a written agreement in the First Schedule form mandatory for new urban tenancies, with joint intimation to the Rent Authority within two months, separate intimation within one month under Section 4(2), and a unique identification number under Section 4(5). Two: residential tenancies of less than twelve months are exempt from intimation under the proviso, and existing tenancies get a three-month window under Section 4(3). Three: under Akhilesh Kumar v. Sanjay Sahgal (2026:AHC:116349), Section 4 is regulatory and evidentiary, not a jurisdictional precondition, so oral tenancies remain within the Act and within the Rent Authority's reach. Four: the general law on leases - Section 107 TPA, Sections 17 and 49 of the Registration Act, and the holdings in Samir Mukherjee, Anthony and Park Street Properties - continues to govern registration, the proof of unwritten tenancies, and the fallback monthly tenancy. For the overall scheme, return to the UP Urban Premises Tenancy Act hub.