Senior Citizens Tribunals Are Not Replacements For Civil Courts To Try Title Disputes Or Forgery Claims: Allahabad High Court
The Bench said that Section 23 of the Act presumes a valid transfer breached by failure to maintain, not a disputed execution; a senior citizen alleging forgery must approach the civil court.
The Allahabad High Court has held that the Tribunal constituted under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 has no jurisdiction to declare a gift deed void on the ground that its execution was forged, since Section 23(1) of the Act presupposes a valid transfer voluntarily made subject to a condition of maintenance, and does not extend to a dispute over whether the document was ever validly executed at all. A writ petition was filed by a 68-year-old senior citizen against the rejection of his application under Section 23 of the Act.
Distinguishing between the statutory fiction of fraud created by a transferee's subsequent failure to maintain the transferor, and an actual allegation that the transfer document itself is a forgery, the Court held that only a civil court of competent jurisdiction can adjudicate the latter category of claim, since the Tribunal's power to declare a transfer void is confined to cases where a genuine transfer, made in expectation of maintenance, is later defeated by the transferee's refusal to honour that condition.
A Division Bench comprising Justice J.J. Munir and Justice Indrajeet Shukla observed, “...we are of opinion that the Tribunals constituted under the Act of 2007 are not replacements for the Courts of civil jurisdiction and cannot be converted into substitutes for such Courts to try civil actions. The Act of 2007 is a Statute, the aim and object whereof is to make more effective provision for the maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens guaranteed under the Constitution. The essential purpose of the Act aforesaid is to secure maintenance and provision of basic amenities and basic needs to parents and senior citizens in the twilight years of their life. The relief of eviction, permissible for the Tribunal to grant, arises when the essential purpose of securing maintenance to parents or senior citizens, already ordered by the Tribunal, cannot be realised, or the protection of life and liberty of senior citizens cannot be otherwise secured…”.
“…The power to evict is incidental to the essential purpose of securing maintenance for parents and senior citizens, basic amenities and basic physical needs, or the protection of their life and property. The Tribunal, if it has to exercise the power to evict, can do so only as ways and means incidental to the primary purpose of securing maintenance, basic amenities and basic physical needs to senior citizens; not otherwise. The Tribunal does not sit as a forum to evict members of the family of a senior citizen either at its whim or to enforce a set of rights that arise under the ordinary civil laws. The Tribunal is no Court of general civil jurisdiction, with powers to adjudicate title and recover possession for the one who holds title or possessory title, or impeaches a transaction done by him as a product of forgery”, the Bench further noted.
Advocate Sarvesh Kumar Pandey appeared for the petitioner and Amrita Singh, Additional Chief Standing Counsel appeared for the respondent.
The petitioner, Balveer Singh, sought eviction of his daughter and son-in-law under Sections 22 and 23 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, alleging they forcibly dispossessed him from his Lalitpur residence using a forged registered gift deed.
He claimed he had severed ties with his daughter after her 2004 marriage and received no support from her. After previous High Court directions, the District Magistrate, acting as the Tribunal, rejected his representation, prompting this petition.
The Court held that Section 23(1) applies only when a senior citizen voluntarily transfers property on the condition of receiving care, and the transferee subsequently fails to provide it, triggering a legal fiction that the transfer was fraudulent. This statutory fiction cannot apply where the senior citizen's core claim is that no valid transfer ever occurred due to forgery. The Court noted that just as a claim against unrelated strangers for forgery could not be brought before the Tribunal, the family relationship does not alter that jurisdictional bar.
“…if the case of a senior citizen, howsoever related to the transferee, is that the transferee secured the gift or other conveyance by actual practice of fraud, coercion, undue influence or forgery, as in this case, it is certainly not the Tribunal, that would have jurisdiction to act at the instance of the senior citizen and declare the conveyance void. It can only be the Court of ordinary original civil jurisdiction, competent to try an action, that can entertain the aggrieved senior citizen's suit on that ground to cancel the conveyance or the gift deed, which the senior citizen says, is the result of forgery. Of course, other reliefs to establish his tile and possession are to be had in the same action before the Civil Court”, the Bench said.
The Court also criticised the District Magistrate for having constituted inquiry committees to examine the forgery allegation, holding that Sections 6 and 8 of the Act mandate a judicial procedure, with evidence taken on oath in the presence of the parties, and that resort to an administrative committee-based inquiry was foreign to the scheme of the Act.
Cause Title: Balveer Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others (Neutral Citation: 2026:AHC:193275-DB)
Appearances:
Petitioner: Sarvesh Kumar Pandey, Akshay Raj Singh, Advocates
Respondent: Amrita Singh, Additional Chief Standing Counsel.