A CM's Press Conference promise is not a Court Order, says HC

A Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, comprising Justices C Hari Shankar and Justice Om Prakash Shukla, has ruled that a public promise made by a Chief Minister at a press conference carries no legally enforceable weight, overturning a 2021 single-judge order that had directed the Delhi government to frame a policy implementing former CM Arvind Kejriwal's COVID-era assurance to pay rent on behalf of poverty-stricken tenants. The ruling in Govt of NCT of Delhi v. Najma settles a consequential question: how far can a citizen drag the government to court over a politician's public word?

At the heart of the dispute was a March 29, 2020 press conference in which Kejriwal, then Chief Minister, urged landlords to defer rent collection from economically distressed tenants during the COVID-19 lockdown and allegedly went a step further, promising that where a tenant was too poor to pay, the government itself would foot the rent. A group of daily wage labourers and tenants, financially crippled by the pandemic's economic fallout, took that promise to court.

In July 2021, Justice Pratibha M Singh accepted their case, ruling the CM's assurance was enforceable and directing the Delhi government to either implement a corresponding policy or furnish reasons for declining. The government appealed, triggering a direct constitutional clash between political accountability and the limits of judicial mandamus.

The Division Bench dismantled the single judge's reasoning on a fundamental ground: a press conference is not a policy instrument, and courts cannot compel governments to honour off-the-cuff political statements as binding legal commitments. Noting that the promise appeared to have been made impulsively, and crucially, found no reflection in the formal DDMA Order 1228 issued during the same period, the bench observed, "We are unaware of the financial, logistical, and other implications of enforcement of the decision that the State would wear the rank of the migrants, which, prima facie, appears to have been taken on the spur of the moment." 

The Court accordingly held that "no mandamus could be issued to enforce the statement made by the then Chief Minister in the press conference," declared the writ petition misconceived, and closed the State's appeal, while leaving the door open for the government to voluntarily frame a rent-relief policy should it choose to do so.