Gurugram: A division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 cannot be pressed into service to settle what is, at its core, a matrimonial dispute. Dismissing an appeal by 70-year-old Anuradha Bansal in an order pronounced on 7 September, a division bench of Justice Suvir Sehgal and Justice Rajesh Gaur ruled that the law meant to protect the elderly from neglect by their children was, in this case, being used by a mother to push out her estranged daughter-in-law.
Bansal had gone to court seeking eviction of her daughter-in-law from a residential property, claiming she was its absolute owner. Her two sons had lived there after her husband’s death, she said, and were paying her rent, a claim her counsel backed with income tax returns. Once her younger son stopped paying rent and moved out, his wife allegedly began harassing her, the appellant told the court.
But the bench read the case differently. It upheld a single judge’s finding that the eviction proceedings were filed at the son’s instance, not to protect an ageing mother, but to help him build a defence in a separate maintenance case his estranged wife had filed against him under the same Act.
Two details gave the game away. One, the son’s claim that he had stopped paying rent was never raised before the maintenance tribunal, nor was it proven before the writ court. Two, though the property had devolved equally on Bansal and both her sons after her husband’s death, she moved to evict only her younger son’s wife, leaving her elder son untouched. The bench said this selective targeting reinforced its reading of what the case was really about.
The court noted the Act exists to enforce children’s duty to care for elderly parents, not to adjudicate property or matrimonial disputes, and cannot be used to evict a daughter-in-law who has a right to reside in a shared household.
It relied on the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in S. Vanitha v. Deputy Commissioner, Bengaluru Urban District for that proposition. The appeal, the bench said, deserved to be dismissed with heavy costs. It let the 70-something appellant off only because of her age.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)