Only senior citizens or parents can file appeal under Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act: HC

The Bombay high court (HC) has held that only senior citizens or parents can file appeal under provisions of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens

The Bombay high court (HC) has held that only senior citizens or parents can file appeal under provisions of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007.

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“Sub-section (1) of section 16 permits ‘any senior citizen or a parent, as the case may be’ aggrieved by an order of a senior citizen tribunal, to prefer an appeal to the Appellate Tribunal,” justice AS Gadkari said last week while dismissing a petition filed by a 59-year-old World resident and her two children challenging a January 31, 2017 order of the senior citizen appellate tribunal.

The appellate tribunal had refused to entertain their appeal against August 12, 2016 order of the senior citizen tribunal evicting them from a shop, an office at Prabhadevi and a workshop at Worli, owned by the petitioner’s estranged husband, a senior citizen.

“A plain reading of the said section would clearly disclose that ‘children’ under Section 2(a) or ‘relative’ under Section 2(g) of the said Act are precluded from preferring an Appeal against an order of a tribunal,” said the court. “It is only the ‘senior citizen’ or ‘a parent’, as the case may be, is permitted to prefer an Appeal to the Appellate Tribunal under Section 16 of the said Act,” it added.

Justice Gadkari held that transfer of the properties by the petitioner to her children was a fraud and therefore, the tribunal had rightly passed an order holding the transfer agreements as unauthorised and directing the petitioners to handover their possession to the senior citizen.