The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments on behalf of tenants in a petition filed by landlords seeking dismissal of the interim Rent Act.

The introduction of a new Rent Control Bill which has been the centre of controversy, is likely to be delayed further, say Mantralaya sources. Senior sources also admit that the State has a weak case. However, a number of registered tenants' associations will intervene in the petition and have prepared a series of arguments to convince the court that Mumbai is a unique case.

Their last meeting with Joshi yielded no concrete plans or solutions, said tenants. What was meant to be a core group turned out to be a jamboree of 200-odd tenants meeting the CM, Minister of State for Housing Raj Purohit and HousingSecretary V P Raja.

Joshi even summoned the Law secretary when tenant activist Chandrashekhar Prabhu asked him why the State couldn't file an affidavit stating that the payment of pugree is a prevalent system in Mumbai.

The law secretary declared that the State could, indeed, file an affidavit that pugree is taken by landlords and the CM said they would accordingly inform the court. Prabhu also grilled Joshi about why the State was telling one story to the courts and a completely different one to the public about the use of the Model Law.

The meeting only ended with the CM asking for more suggestions from the tenant groups to amend the Act, leaving the tenants with no illusions -- they knew in order to win in court, they needed to put up their own fight.

Hence, the JVPD Tenants and Residents' Associations will intervene through its counsel Anil Dewan. Their main plea will be for dismissal of the landlords' petition, while alternately urging that the matter be referred to a Constitution Bench of theSupreme Court.

They argue that the ``issues relating to standard rent of old cessed buildings (around 1,600) built before 1940 cannot be read in isolation and pugree a part of a wider legislative scheme''. This, they point out, includes the 100-months rent scheme for tenants to form a co-operative housing society under chapter VIII A of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development (MHADA) Act where the State can acquire property it has cessed.

However, the challenge to the constitutional validity of chapter VIII A is also pending in the Supreme Court in a special leave petition filed by landlords in 1992.

Harish Ganatra, another tenant activist, echoes the view that Rent Act and Chapter VIII A should go hand-in-hand and need to be argued simultaneously. But State Housing Minister Suresh Jain does not want to mix the two petitions.

The JVPD tenants' group argues that despite the fact that the State had exempted buildings constructed after 1987 from standard rent for the first five years, none of thelandlords had asked for market rent.