Pensioner Able to Maintain Himself Cannot Use Senior Citizens Act to Evict Son: Bombay High Court

After disputes with his son and daughter-in-law, the petitioner applied under Section 5 of the 2007 Act; the Sub-Divisional Officer rejected it on 18.11.2021 and the appeal failed on 17.08.2022 (paras 2-4). He argued that, although he had claimed no maintenance, he had a right in the property, which he said he had funded and which his son had gifted to him by a registered deed, and that eviction could be ordered under the Act (paras 6-7). The respondents said he drew his own pension and his late wife's family pension, and that a suit to cancel the gift deed was pending (para 8). Mediation failed, and the father rejected his son's offer that he live on the ground floor (para 10).

Both authorities had found that the Act could not be invoked to evict the son because the petitioner regularly receives his pension and his late wife's family pension (para 11). Although the appellate authority wrongly said the gift deed was unregistered, the petitioner is not a person unable to maintain himself, and the deed's validity was outside that authority's scope (para 12). Section 4 entitles only a senior citizen "unable to maintain himself from his own earning or out of the property owned by him" to apply under Section 5 (para 13). A person admittedly receiving a regular pension and a family pension therefore falls outside Section 4 (para 14). It was admitted that he had sufficient earning to maintain himself; the dispute over who paid for the property, bought in the son's name in 2011 and gifted to the father in 2020, and the pending proceedings were not germane (para 15). Such a senior citizen cannot claim maintenance, or eviction in pursuance of it, since eviction is an incident of enforcing the right to maintenance and protection (para 17). The concurrent findings were not perverse (paras 16, 18).