Kids’ duty to take care of parents: HC

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 16

The Punjab and Haryana HC has ruled that abandoning parents after receiving property was not an uncommon phenomenon and permitting children to corrode legal and moral values of maintaining them would result in mushrooming of old age homes. The HC also reminded the children that looking after the parents was not only a value-based principle, but a bounden duty.

MORE OLD AGE HOMES

• The HC ruled that abandoning parents after receiving property was not uncommon and permitting children to corrode legal and moral values of maintaining them would result in more old age homes
• It reminded children that looking after parents was not only a value-based principle, but a bounden duty
• The court’s assertion came in a case where a senior citizen was abandoned by his daughter after property was transferred to her.

The assertion by the Bench of Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma came in a case where a senior citizen was driven out of the home by his daughter after over 34 kanal was transferred to her, forcing him to live in an old age home.

The daughter had initially moved the court after Fatehgarh Sahib Maintenance Tribunal-cum-Sub Divisional Magistrate directed an Assistant Collector to take necessary action for cancellation of mutation. Taking up the appeal after a Single Judge dismissed her plea, the Bench asserted the children often abandoned parents after receiving the property. In such situation, the Maintenance of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, was “an enabling lifeline for such old aged parents not looked after by their children”.

The Bench asserted the Act, a special law, was enacted to uphold the dignity and respect of the senior citizens and to ensure social security as the State had serious concern about the emotional and psychological challenges faced by them.

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