Delhi High Court (Express photo: Ravi Kanojia/File)
Two minors have approached the Delhi High Court fearing eviction from their grandparents home in south Delhi, and sought a restraining order. The boy (13) and girl (16) urged the High Court to restrain their grandparents from taking such action against them and their parents. Highlighting their Right to Life and Equality, the children sought quashing of the Delhi Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Rules, whereby the Delhi government has provided for a “procedure for eviction from property/residential building of senior citizen/parent”.
“The Rules are ultra vires the Parent Act (Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007), in as much as, the said concept of eviction is absolutely alien to the Parent Act, which does not provide for any such procedure for eviction,” the plea, filed through the children’s mother, stated.
A bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice A K Chawla directed the authorities that “no coercive action shall be taken” against the children and their parents. It, however, refused to stay the proceedings before the District Magistrate (DM), South East, who is hearing the plea of the grandparents seeking to remove the children and their parents from the house.
The plea sought quashing of a November 2017 order of the Appellate Court of Divisional Commissioner, by which it had set aside the DM’s decision rejecting the senior citizen’s plea to evict his son and others from the house. The matter was listed for hearing on September 5.
The DC also remanded the matter back to the DM for fresh consideration on merits of the case. The plea claimed that the while remanding the matter back to the DM, the DC has illegally curtailed their rights from raising their preliminary objection.
The children’s parents have to respond to the DM’s showcause notice as to why an order of eviction should not be issued against them. “The petitioners are admittedly coparceners (a person who shares equally with others in the inheritance of an undivided estate) in the property,” the plea said, adding that their parents have already instituted a partition suit, seeking their rightful share in family properties and businesses, including the house they are staying at.
“It is pertinent to mention herein that the Parent Act did not intend to trample upon the rights guaranteed under the different Acts, including right of residence and maintenance of coparceners or members of joint Hindu family in the family residential house,” the plea said.