What the new Occupant Protection Bill means for landlords & tenants

Protection of Occupants Bill, 2025 – A Brief Legal Commentary

By Delan De Silva, Attorney-at-Law

Sri Lanka’s Protection of Occupants Bill, 2025 marks a significant shift in landlord–tenant law. Its core objective is to prevent unlawful evictions and to ensure that disputes relating to possession are resolved strictly through court process.

The Bill is well-intentioned and socially protective in design. However, it also raises important legal and constitutional implications.

Under section 2, the Bill applies to an “occupant” who is in lawful occupation of premises and has been in undisturbed and uninterrupted occupation for more than three months. This is a notably low statutory threshold, after which statutory protection is triggered.

Sections 3, 4 and 5 prohibit landlords from cutting or withholding essential services and utilities, damaging or tampering with premises to compel vacation, or ejecting an occupant except by court order, even where contractual breaches are alleged. In effect, self-help eviction measures are outlawed.

Section 6 permits an occupant to seek restoration of utilities, injunctions, restoration to possession, and interim relief. Sections 7 and 10 provide for expedited procedure and enforcement through the Fiscal, with contempt sanctions for obstruction.

While the objective of protecting occupants from unlawful eviction is legitimate, the Bill does not meaningfully distinguish between compliant and defaulting occupants once the three-month threshold is crossed. There is also no statutory mechanism addressing loss of rent, prolonged default, or property deterioration during litigation.

Although socially protective in intent, the Bill raises constitutional questions relating to equality before the law under Article 12(1), proportionality of restrictions on lawful business under Article 14(1)(g), and the imposition of penal consequences within a predominantly civil framework.

The Protection of Occupants Bill represents a decisive policy choice: occupation is prioritised over contract enforcement, and eviction is fully judicialised. As with many social-protection statutes, the real test will lie in interpretation and application.

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