Both sides arrive with the same sentence. The landlord says it is his property and he wants it back. The tenant says he has paid on time for years and is being pushed out. Both feel obviously right, and neither of them has yet asked the question that actually decides the case: which law is this tenancy under? Because Delhi has two completely separate systems running side by side, the road you are on is fixed by a single line in a statute, and that line was drawn at a figure that will surprise you. Everything else — which forum, what grounds are even available, how fast it moves, what the tenant can and cannot be evicted for — follows from it. This page is written for both sides, and it does not take one.
Section 3 of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 is headed “Act not to apply to certain premises”. Clause (c) of it provides that nothing in the Act shall apply to any premises, whether residential or not, whose monthly rent exceeds three thousand and five hundred rupees.
Read that once more, because almost nobody in Delhi believes it the first time. If the monthly rent of the premises is above that figure, the Delhi Rent Control Act does not apply to the tenancy at all. Not partly. Not for some purposes. The whole protective structure — the Rent Controller, the closed list of grounds, the protection against eviction, the machinery for deposit of rent — is simply not available, to either side.
And if the rent is at or below that figure, the opposite is true with equal force. The landlord cannot evict because he wants to, cannot evict because the agreement has expired, and cannot evict because he has found a tenant who will pay more. He can evict only on a ground the statute itself lists, before an officer the statute itself creates, and on evidence.
The rent figure decides which of two separate systems you are in. Below the line: Rent Controller, a closed list of grounds, slow but protective. Above the line: civil court, the agreement and the ordinary law, and possession is a normal civil remedy. Nobody on either side may take possession by force whichever system applies. And a tenant served in a bona fide requirement case has one narrow, dated opportunity to defend, which is lost by doing nothing.
So the first thing to establish is not what the agreement says, not what the notice said, and not who is morally right. It is the rent. Everything on this page after this section is written twice — once for each side of that line.
The reason is history, and knowing it stops the figure feeling absurd.
Rent control legislation in India came out of a period when housing was desperately short and tenants could be turned out at will. The answer the legislature chose was to freeze the relationship: rent could not be raised freely, and a tenant could not be evicted except on stated grounds. That protection is powerful, and it was meant to be.
But a protection that strong, applied to every tenancy forever, has a well-known side effect — owners stop letting property out at all, because a tenant once in is very difficult to get out. So the Act was given a ceiling: above a certain rent, the tenancy is treated as a commercial arrangement between people who can look after themselves, and the ordinary law governs it. The ceiling was fixed at three thousand five hundred rupees by an amendment in 1988, and it has not been revised since.
The practical result today is that the overwhelming majority of Delhi tenancies signed in the last two decades are outside rent control, because almost no rent in the city is below that line. But a great many older tenancies — shops in the walled city, rooms let decades ago, premises where rent was never revised precisely because the tenant knew what revision would cost him — are still firmly inside it. Those are the cases that run for years.
Neither system is the “real” one. They both operate, in the same city, on the same day, in the same building sometimes.
Section 3(d) carries a second exclusion that matters for newer buildings. Premises constructed after the commencement of the 1988 amending Act are exempt from the Act for a period of ten years from the date of completion of construction.
So a tenancy can sit outside rent control for two entirely different reasons, and they behave differently over time. A rent above the line keeps the tenancy outside for as long as that rent stands. A ten-year exemption on a new building is temporary — when it runs out, a tenancy whose rent is below the line comes back into the Act.
That second situation is rare in practice today, because a building completed shortly after 1988 has long crossed ten years and almost no tenancy in such a building is under three thousand five hundred rupees a month. But it is worth knowing the clause exists, because it is the kind of point an opponent raises and nobody in the room has an answer to.
| Rent at or below ₹3,500/month | Rent above ₹3,500/month | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing law | Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958 | The agreement, the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, and general law |
| Forum | The Rent Controller (and the Rent Control Tribunal on appeal) | The civil court of appropriate jurisdiction |
| Grounds for eviction | Only what Section 14(1) lists — a closed set | Determination of the tenancy, then possession as an ordinary civil claim |
| Tenant’s position | Statutory protection; a tenant paying rent and behaving is very hard to remove | Contractual; once the tenancy is validly ended, continued occupation is not protected |
| Speed | Usually slow, except the Section 25B route | Depends entirely on the court’s list and how the case is run |
| Rent increase | Regulated by the Act | Whatever the agreement provides, and what the parties agree at renewal |
A petition filed before the Rent Controller for premises that are outside the Act does not get decided on its merits — it gets thrown out for want of jurisdiction, and the months spent on it are gone. The reverse is equally true. This is why the rent figure is established first, in writing, from the agreement and the receipts, before anybody drafts anything.
Where the seven district complexes sit and what happens inside them is set out on our Delhi courts page; the complex that hears your matter depends on where the property is.
This is the section that surprises landlords. Section 14(1) begins by stating that no order or decree for the recovery of possession of any premises shall be made by any court or Controller in favour of the landlord against a tenant — and then sets out the provisos on which alone such an order may be made.
The structure matters. The default is that the tenant stays. Eviction is the exception, and the exceptions are written down. Broadly, they cover non-payment of rent after a proper demand, subletting or parting with possession without consent, using the premises for a purpose other than the one they were let for, causing substantial damage or making unauthorised construction, causing nuisance, the tenant having acquired or been allotted other suitable accommodation, the premises being required bona fide by the landlord for his own occupation, and the premises being required for rebuilding or repairs which cannot be carried out without vacating.
What is not on that list is the whole point. “The agreement has expired.” “I have found somebody who will pay double.” “He is rude to my family.” “I have decided to sell.” None of these is a ground. Under rent control, a landlord who has nothing from the list has no case, however strongly he feels about it, and the sooner he is told that the less money he spends discovering it.
The exact wording and the conditions attached to each ground are for whoever is advising you to read against your facts — several of them carry provisos that change the answer completely. We have deliberately not reproduced the clause text here, because a paraphrased ground used in a petition is how petitions fail.
Non-payment of rent is the commonest ground and the one most people assume is automatic. It is not, and Section 14(2) is the reason.
In substance, where the ground is non-payment, the Controller shall not make an order for recovery of possession if the tenant makes payment or deposit as required by Section 15 — but that relief is not available to a tenant who has already had the benefit of it once before. The Act gives a defaulting tenant one chance to put the money right and keep the premises. One.
If you are the landlord and the arrears are the real grievance, a legal notice properly drafted and provably served is the first step and often the whole of it — a surprising number of tenants pay on receiving one. If you are the tenant and one has arrived, a considered reply sent within time is worth far more than silence.
Of all the grounds in Section 14(1), one behaves differently from the rest: the landlord’s bona fide requirement of the premises for occupation as a residence for himself or for any member of his family dependent on him, where he has no other reasonably suitable residential accommodation.
Every word of that carries weight and each one has been fought over. Bona fide — genuine, not a device to get the premises back for reletting. Requirement — a real need, which is a higher thing than a wish, although the courts have repeatedly said it does not have to be a dire necessity. For himself or a dependent family member — not for a relation who is independent of him, and not for a business where the clause is the residential one. No other reasonably suitable accommodation — and the other premises the landlord owns are going to be put to him in cross-examination, one by one.
For the tenant, this is the ground to take most seriously, for a reason that has nothing to do with its merits and everything to do with the procedure attached to it.
Because a genuine owner who needs his own house should not have to wait a decade, the Act attaches a special summary procedure to bona fide requirement cases. It is in Section 25B, and it inverts the ordinary position in one decisive way.
In an ordinary case, a defendant who does nothing still forces the claimant to prove his case. Under Section 25B, the tenant on whom the summons is served shall not contest the prayer for eviction unless he files an affidavit stating the grounds on which he seeks to contest, and obtains leave from the Controller. And if he does not, the section provides that the statement made by the landlord in the application for eviction shall be deemed to be admitted by the tenant and the applicant shall be entitled to an order for eviction.
We have deliberately not printed the number of days here. It lives in the prescribed form of summons rather than in a much-quoted section number, and a wrong figure repeated from a website is exactly the kind of error that costs somebody their home. Read the summons, and take it to an advocate the day it arrives. Not the week it arrives.
The Supreme Court in Abid-Ul-Islam v. Inder Sain Dua (2022) dealt with this procedure and the approach to leave under it. The point that matters for an ordinary tenant is a simple one: leave to defend is not granted for the asking. The affidavit has to disclose facts which, if proved, would disentitle the landlord from obtaining an order. A denial is not such a fact.
This is why the summons is not a document to think about over a weekend. Facts of this kind take days to assemble, and the affidavit has to be sworn and filed inside a period that began the moment you were served. Whoever drafts it has to know the facts before the clock runs out.
Our part of this is the typing and the assembly: the affidavit as your advocate settles it, the application, the annexures indexed and paginated, the attestation arranged. What goes into it is his work, and it is the part that decides the case.
If the rent is above the line, none of the above applies to you. There is no closed list of grounds, no Rent Controller, and no Section 25B. What there is instead is the agreement you signed and the general law of landlord and tenant.
The shape of such a case is different. A landlord does not need a ground at all in the rent control sense. What he needs is for the tenancy to have come to an end — by the expiry of its term, or by a valid notice determining it — and then a decree for possession from the civil court, because even here he may not take possession himself.
That last clause is the one landlords outside rent control most often get wrong. “The Act does not apply to me” is true. “So I can take my own property back” is not.
| Landlord assumes | What is actually so |
|---|---|
| “The eleven months are over, so he is a trespasser” | He is in possession, and possession is recovered through the court, not by you |
| “I can change the lock while he is away” | That is the one act that turns your strong case into his |
| “I will stop the water and the power” | An application will follow, and it will be heard before your possession claim is |
| “The agreement says I can re-enter” | A clause does not authorise forcible dispossession of a person in settled possession |
| “He has no papers, so he has nothing” | A tenancy can be proved by receipts, payments, and conduct. The absence of writing cuts both ways |
For tenancies governed by ordinary law, Section 106 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 sets out how a tenancy in the absence of a contract or usage to the contrary is presumed to run and how it is ended. A lease of immovable property for agricultural or manufacturing purposes is deemed to be from year to year, terminable by six months’ notice; a lease for any other purpose is deemed to be from month to month, terminable by fifteen days’ notice.
The notice has to be in writing, signed by or on behalf of the person giving it, and either sent by post to the party intended to be bound by it or tendered or delivered personally, or affixed to a conspicuous part of the property. Section 111 sets out the ways a lease determines, of which notice is one.
Two practical points that decide more cases than the law does. First, the notice period runs from service, so how you served it is a fact you will have to prove — keep the postal receipt, the tracking, the acknowledgement. Second, the agreement may provide for something different, and where it does, the contract is where the answer starts.
A notice that describes the premises wrongly, is addressed to the wrong person, gives a period that does not match the tenancy, or cannot be shown to have been delivered, is a month spent for nothing. That is the whole reason to have it drafted rather than copied.
The instinct is either to ignore it or to reply in anger. Both are expensive.
A notice is not an order. Nobody has decided anything yet, and receiving one does not oblige you to move. What it does do is fix the other side’s version of events in writing, on a date, and if you say nothing, that version stands unanswered when the matter reaches a court months later.
We prepare the reply to your advocate’s instructions, and where there is no advocate yet, the directory is free to search and free to write through.
Whatever the rent, whatever the agreement says, whichever system applies: a person in settled possession of immovable property is not to be dispossessed except in accordance with law.
That principle is the reason Section 6 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 exists. If any person is dispossessed without his consent of immovable property otherwise than in due course of law, he, or any person claiming through him, may by suit recover possession — and the suit is to be brought within six months from the date of dispossession.
Two features of that remedy explain why it is so dangerous to a landlord who takes matters into his own hands. First, in such a suit the court is concerned with possession and dispossession, not with title. The tenant does not have to prove he had a right to be there. He has to prove he was there and was put out otherwise than in due course of law. Second, it is fast by design.
If you are being advised to do this by somebody confident and helpful, that is the moment to get a second opinion from an advocate. It is the single most common way a winnable matter is lost in this area of law.
Act quickly and do three things in order.
First, record what has happened while it is fresh — photographs with dates, the state of the door and the lock, what is inside, who was present. Second, report it, so that there is a contemporaneous record made by somebody other than you; we prepare police complaints to your instructions, and what the police will and will not do with a matter of this kind is set out below. Third, see an advocate about the six-month period in Section 6, because it is not a long one and it runs from the dispossession, not from the day you decided to do something about it.
Bring the agreement, the rent receipts or bank entries, the electricity bill in your name if there is one, and anything showing the address was yours. Possession is a fact, and facts are proved with ordinary paper.
More landlord-tenant disputes in Delhi are actually about the deposit than about possession. The tenant has left, the landlord has kept two months’ deposit against damage nobody agreed on, and there is no independent record of what the premises looked like on either date.
The deposit is money held on terms. What those terms are is whatever the agreement says, and where the agreement is silent, the deposit is refundable subject to lawful deductions that the person making them has to justify. “I felt it needed painting” is not a justification; a bill is.
Where a deposit is withheld and the amount is worth pursuing, the ordinary route is a legal notice followed, if nothing comes of it, by a civil claim for recovery; we prepare the plaint to your advocate’s instructions. A clean rent agreement drawn up at the start costs a fraction of what this argument costs at the end.
Inside rent control, revision of rent is regulated by the Act and is not a matter of what the landlord announces. There is a mechanism, and it has conditions attached.
Outside rent control, the answer is the agreement. If it provides for an increase of a stated percentage at a stated interval, that is what applies. If it provides nothing, the rent stays what it is for the term, and an increase is a new bargain the tenant is free to refuse — at which point the landlord’s remedy is to end the tenancy properly, not to demand more and treat non-payment of the demanded amount as a default.
That last point catches people. A landlord who unilaterally raises rent, is paid the old rent, and then says the tenant is in arrears of the difference has created a dispute about the increase rather than a case about arrears. And a tenant who quietly starts paying the higher figure has made the increase a fact.
We have not printed the permitted percentage for rent-controlled premises, the interval, or any figure connected with it. That is Rule H on this site: anything set by statute that has been amended, or that turns on conditions we cannot see, is not stated as a number. Your advocate reads the current provision against your tenancy.
No. This is one of the few questions on this page with a clean answer on both sides of the line.
A tenancy is an interest in the property, and the person who buys the property buys it with the tenancy on it. The purchaser becomes the landlord, and the tenant becomes his tenant, on the same terms. A sale does not determine the lease and does not by itself create a right to possession.
What does change is practical. The new owner will usually want the rent paid to him, and the tenant is entitled to be told of the transfer and to know whom he is paying — paying the wrong person is a problem the tenant carries, not the seller. Ask for the sale deed or at least proof of the transfer before changing who you pay, keep the letter that told you to change, and take receipts from the new owner in his own name from the first month.
Where a tenant is being told the sale has ended his tenancy, that is simply wrong, and it is worth saying so in writing early. Where a purchaser genuinely needs the premises, the route is the same route any landlord has — which is the rest of this page.
Subletting or parting with possession without the landlord’s consent is a ground under the Rent Control Act, and it is one of the grounds most often alleged and least often proved.
The reason is that the allegation is easy to make from the street and hard to establish in evidence. Somebody else is seen in the shop. A different name appears on the board. A relative has moved in. None of that is by itself subletting, which requires parting with possession — the tenant giving up control of the premises to another in exchange for consideration — and not merely the presence of another person.
For the landlord who genuinely has a sublet on his hands, the case is built on documents rather than sightings: who pays the electricity, in whose name the trade licence or registration stands, what the signage says, what the bank entries show, who the neighbours deal with. For the tenant wrongly accused, the answer is the same kind of material pointing the other way.
Where a family member, a partner or an employee is in occupation and the relationship is legitimate, say so plainly at the first opportunity and document it. Denials that shift over time are what lose these cases.
A commercial tenancy is not a separate legal universe, and this surprises people on both sides. Section 3(c) of the Rent Control Act applies to premises “whether residential or not”, so the same three-thousand-five-hundred line decides a shop just as it decides a room.
Two differences matter in practice. First, old commercial tenancies in the older parts of Delhi are far more likely to be genuinely under rent control, because the rent was fixed decades ago and never revised — which is exactly why those disputes are so bitter and so long. Second, the bona fide requirement ground in its residential form is about residence; a landlord who needs the premises for a business is on different ground and needs to be advised specifically on which clause he is under.
The stakes are also different. A shop is a livelihood with goodwill attached to a location, so both sides should think hard about settlement before they think about hearings. A commercial tenant who loses possession does not merely move house.
This is the most confidently repeated piece of wrong advice in the field.
The idea is that if the document is called a licence rather than a lease, the occupier is a licensee, no tenancy exists, and possession can be taken back on the terms of the document. The difficulty is that what the document is called is not what decides the question. The substance does — whether exclusive possession was given, what control the owner retained, how the arrangement actually operated month after month.
A document headed “leave and licence” under which a family lives alone in a flat with their own lock, their own electricity connection and their own furniture for six years is going to be examined on those facts, not on its heading. And the landlord who relied on the heading to take possession himself has done the one thing that cannot be undone.
That is not a reason to avoid the form — a properly drawn leave and licence agreement has real uses, and our guide to it explains where. It is a reason not to treat the label as a shortcut past the courts.
Look at what each side actually wants once the anger has been priced.
The landlord wants the premises back and would prefer them back this year. The tenant wants time to find somewhere, his deposit returned, and not to be treated as a thief on the way out. Those two positions are not far apart, and they are reconcilable in an afternoon. What is not reconcilable is the version where each side spends two years establishing that the other behaved badly.
Where a case is already filed, this can be recorded before the court so it becomes enforceable rather than a promise. Mediation is available through the court system and it works better in tenancy matters than in almost any other kind, because the dispute is about money and dates rather than about who is a better person. We prepare the applications and the terms as your advocate settles them.
We are not going to print a number of months, and the reason is the same as everywhere else on this site: the real answer depends on the forum, the ground, whether the tenancy itself is admitted, how many witnesses there are, and how much of the file has to be proved.
What can be said honestly is the shape of it. A bona fide requirement case under the summary procedure is the fastest route the Act provides, and it is fastest of all where the tenant does not obtain leave — which is exactly why the tenant’s first fortnight matters more than anything he does later. A contested ordinary case under rent control, where the tenancy, the arrears and the ground are all in issue, is slow, and appeals sit on top of that. A possession suit outside rent control sits somewhere between, and turns heavily on whether the notice and the tenancy are admitted.
Two things shorten every one of these, and neither is a procedural trick. Admitting what is not really in dispute, and having the documents ready before the first date instead of after the fourth.
An order for possession is not itself possession. It is a decision that has to be executed, and execution is a separate proceeding with its own application, its own dates and its own file.
This is where a landlord who has been patient for three years often becomes impatient in a week and does something irreversible. The same rule applies as on day one: possession is taken through the process of the court, with the officer of the court, and not by you. An order in your favour does not license self-help; it makes self-help unnecessary.
What execution requires is the decree or order, a certified copy of it, the execution petition properly drawn, and patience through a process that has its own steps. Where the judgement debtor raises objections, those get decided before the warrant issues, and that is part of the system rather than a failure of it.
Note the other side of this too. A tenant against whom an order has been passed is not helped by resisting execution — it adds nothing to his position and it removes whatever sympathy remains. Where there is a genuine ground to challenge, the route is an appeal or the appropriate application, filed in time.
Both sides call the police, and both are usually disappointed for the same reason: a landlord and tenant dispute is a civil matter, and the police cannot decide who is entitled to possession.
What they can do is act where there is a criminal element — a break-in, force, threats, damage to property, a person put in fear. So the tenant whose lock has been broken and the landlord whose premises have been damaged both have something to report, and a report made contemporaneously is worth a great deal when the civil matter is heard months later.
What they will not do is evict a tenant for a landlord, hand possession to anybody, or enforce an agreement. A landlord who is told at the station that this is a civil matter has not been brushed off; he has been told the law correctly.
We draft complaints to your instructions. What is written in one matters, because a complaint that overstates is used against the person who made it later, and a complaint that leaves out the dates is of no use to anybody.
Not eloquence. Paper, and the dates on it.
| Question in issue | What answers it |
|---|---|
| Is the Act applicable at all? | The rent actually payable — the agreement, the receipts, the bank credits, over a period |
| Is there a landlord-tenant relationship? | The agreement, receipts in the landlord’s name, conduct, correspondence |
| Are there arrears, and from when? | Bank statements month by month, receipts, and the demand with proof of service |
| Was the notice valid and served? | The notice itself, the postal receipt, the tracking, the acknowledgement or the returned cover |
| Is the requirement bona fide? | What else the landlord owns, who lives where, and since when |
| Has there been subletting? | Electricity and licence records, signage, who deals with whom, payments |
| What was the condition of the premises? | Dated photographs on both handovers, the inventory, meter readings |
| Was possession taken by force? | Photographs, the police record made on the day, neighbours, the lock itself |
Every row of that table is ordinary material that existed before the dispute started. The side that kept it wins arguments the other side thought were about fairness.
This section exists because the honest version of it is not written anywhere.
If you have not paid, the rent is not disputed and there is no defect in the case against you, fighting does not produce a better outcome. It produces the same outcome later, with costs, with an order recorded against you, and with the deposit gone. What produces a better outcome is dealing with it early: an agreed time to vacate, an agreed treatment of the arrears, and a handover that does not end in a complaint.
There is one important qualification. “In the wrong” on the facts is not the same as having no defence in law, and people regularly assume they have none when they do — the first-default protection under Section 14(2), a demand that was never properly made, a petition filed in a forum that has no jurisdiction over the premises, a ground pleaded that the facts do not support. Have somebody look before you concede. A single consultation is cheap next to a concession that was not necessary.
| If you are the landlord | If you are the tenant | |
|---|---|---|
| Establish first | The rent figure, from the agreement and receipts — it decides your forum | The same figure, for the same reason |
| Find the paper | Agreement, receipts, bank credits, every message about rent | Agreement, proof of every payment, the deposit receipt |
| Before acting | Identify the ground, if you are under the Act. If you have none, stop | Read the document you received to the end, and note the date of service |
| Never | Change locks, cut utilities, remove belongings, send anybody round | Ignore a summons, or leave the premises without a written handover |
| Do this week | Have a notice drafted properly and served provably | See an advocate if a summons has arrived — this week, not this month |
| Ask early | Whether a settlement gets the premises back faster than a case | Whether a settlement gets you time and your deposit |
A tenancy dispute is very often a dispute between people neither of whom has spare money, and a tenant facing eviction is by definition facing a housing cost he is already struggling with. Free legal services under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 exist precisely for this, and the entitled categories include people below the income limit that the State Authority notifies, along with several categories entitled regardless of income. The Delhi State Legal Services Authority publishes the current limit and its helpline, there is a legal services committee attached to the court complexes, and asking costs nothing. We have not printed the income figure here because it is revised. Ask at the complex, or ask us and we will point you at the right desk.
Tenancy disputes outlive memories. Keep one folder, and keep it in date order: the agreement and every renewal, proof of every rent payment from the first month, the deposit receipt, meter readings and utility bills, dated photographs from both handovers, every notice sent or received with its proof of service, every court paper with the date it was received written on it, and a single sheet at the front listing what happened and when.
That last sheet is the one thing nobody makes and everybody needs. Six months in, when your advocate asks when the demand was served, the answer should take four seconds.
| What was done | What it cost |
|---|---|
| Filed before the Rent Controller for premises outside the Act | A petition dismissed for want of jurisdiction, and months gone |
| Assumed the expiry of an eleven-month agreement is itself a ground | A rent-control petition with no ground under Section 14(1) |
| Put a Section 25B summons aside for a fortnight | No leave to defend, and the landlord’s case deemed admitted |
| Filed leave to defend denying everything without facts | Leave refused on an affidavit that disclosed no triable issue |
| Changed the lock while the tenant was away | A Section 6 suit the landlord defends instead of the case he was winning |
| Served a notice by hand with no acknowledgement | Service denied, and the whole period counted again |
| Took rent in cash for years with no receipts | The rent figure itself in dispute — and with it, which law applies |
| Started paying an increase “under protest” without saying so in writing | Conduct that establishes the increase was accepted |
| Handed over the keys with nothing signed | The deposit argument, with no record of the condition or the date |
| Relied on the heading “leave and licence” and re-entered | A dispossession case decided on the substance of the arrangement |
The tenancy document and every renewal of it. Proof of the rent actually paid month by month — receipts, bank statements, transfer records — going back as far as you have it, since this establishes the figure the whole case turns on. The deposit receipt. Electricity and water bills and the name they stand in. Photographs of the premises with dates. Every notice or letter that has passed between the parties, with proof of how it was sent. Any court paper already received, with the date of service noted on it. And the ownership document, if you are the landlord, or whatever you have about the ownership if you are the tenant.
Add affidavits sworn before an oath commissioner where they are required, translations of anything not in English or Hindi prepared in advance, and certified copies of orders already passed. Where a landlord’s NOC is needed for something unrelated — a passport, a registration, a licence — that is a different document and it does not affect the dispute.
Documentation, and nothing beyond it. Nobody here is an advocate, nobody appears before a Controller or a court, and nobody advises either side on whether to fight, settle or vacate. What we do is the paper: the rent agreement or the leave and licence agreement drawn properly at the start, the legal notice and the reply to one, the petition or plaint typed to your advocate’s instructions, the written statement or reply, the applications including leave to defend, the affidavits and their attestation, translations, certified copies, the execution petition and, where it comes to that, the appeal papers.
What is argued, and whether to argue it at all, belongs to counsel. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. The directory is free to open and free to write through, it runs A to Z, and no listing on it was bought.
Every document has its price on its own service page, and you can read it before you order anything or speak to anybody. Court fees, process fees and whatever a government office levies are shown separately from our charge, because that money is not ours and does not pass through us.
You are told the whole figure before work begins, and none of it is payable in advance. And on a tenancy matter we will regularly say the thing that costs us the work: where the two sides are four weeks and one deposit apart, a settlement written down properly is worth more to both of you than a file that runs for years, and we will say so before drafting a petition.
Listed alphabetically. We do not rank, rate or feature advocates, and nobody pays for a position here — the reason is on our Find an Advocate page. Neither reading a profile nor writing to somebody through it costs anything.
Send us the agreement and whatever proof of rent you have, from either side of the dispute. We will tell you which system your tenancy is in, what the paper you have received actually is, and what a complete set of documents would contain — and put the directory in front of you, because if a summons has arrived, the days are already counting. Searching it is free and no commission from anybody on it reaches us.
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