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Informist, Monday, Apr. 6, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court Monday ruled that promises or assurances made by state chief ministers at a press conference are unenforceable unless backed by official policy. The high court rejected petitions seeking a direction to the Delhi government to implement former chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal's promise on Mar. 29, 2020, to waive tenants' rent if they were unable to pay due to financial hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

The high court said that the assurance made by Kejriwal in his press conference did not find support from statute, executive instruction, or any other instrument having the force of law. The assurance was apparently made in the heat of the situation, which was unquestionably unprecedented, so as to further incentivise the migrant tenants to remain indoors, but it was without any legal authority whatsoever, the court said.

 

There is nothing to indicate that before Kejriwal extended the assurance, he or the executive authorities had assessed the financial and other implications of the assurance, or the impact that it would have on the state exchequer, the court said. Given the position that the country found itself at that point in time, the court doubts whether any such exercise was even possible, let alone within the span of a single day, it said.

 

"We are, therefore, prima facie of the opinion that the assurance, by the chief minister, that the state would bear the rent of all migrants, was not made after the requisite degree of study and application of mind to all relevant aspects," the bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Om Prakash Shukla said. However, the Delhi government, under the Bharatiya Janata Party, was not inhibited from taking a policy decision on the assurance given by the former chief minister regarding payment of rent to the migrants, should it so deem appropriate, the court said.

 

The case has its genesis in daily-wage labourers approaching the high court, seeking a direction to the Delhi government to waive the rent payable on tenanted premises during the COVID lockdown. The Delhi government said that a mere statement, sans anything more, cannot form the basis of an enforceable right against them.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Saji George Titus

 

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