Variational principle for gravity in the extended phase space

Variational formalism in the extended phase space for fields is applied to gravity. It is shown that the requirement of invariance under arbitrary local inertial frames implies a coupling of torsion to a 3-form of matter fields on the one hand and to a 3-form (related to the Einstein tensor) on the other. Gravitational dynamics is restricted to torsion zero surface in the extended phase space for Einstein-Hilbert action.