Maintenance claims under the Senior Citizens Act cannot be rejected without inquiry into material factual disputes.

The petitioners, parents of respondents 1 to 3, applied to the Assistant Commissioner under Section 5 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, seeking maintenance from their children.

The Assistant Commissioner rejected the application on 15 March 2023, and the Deputy Commissioner dismissed their appeal on 14 February 2025.

The petitioners alleged that respondent 1 had taken over petitioner 1’s business and denied them maintenance and shelter. Respondent 1 disputed this, asserting that petitioner 1 conducted an independent business and that the house he occupied was built with his own funds.

The parties also disputed the petitioners’ income, including pension and Gruhalakshmi scheme payments, and whether they had shelter of their own.

The petitioners challenged both orders and sought, among other relief, maintenance and entry of their names in a property record.

1. Whether the Assistant Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner could reject the petitioners’ maintenance application and appeal without addressing the material factual disputes concerning the petitioners’ income, business, and shelter.

2. Whether the matter required reconsideration by the Assistant Commissioner after an enquiry into those disputed facts.

The petitioners’ application was made under Section 5 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007.

The Court held that, where material factual disputes bear on a maintenance application, the authority must enquire into those matters and give a reasoned order; it should not reject the application without addressing them.

The judgment cited no precedent or further statutory test.

The Court found that the parties gave conflicting accounts of petitioner 1’s business, the petitioners’ scheme payments and pension, and their access to shelter. Those matters could affect the assessment of the maintenance application, but the impugned orders did not address them.

The Court therefore concluded that the application required reconsideration following an enquiry into whether petitioner 1 had an independent business, the amounts the petitioners received under the relevant schemes, and whether they had shelter of their own.

It remitted the matter to the Assistant Commissioner for an enquiry and a reasoned decision within 30 days of receipt of the certified order. The Assistant Commissioner was directed, if it was proved that the petitioners had no independent source of income, to keep the High Court’s interim maintenance order in mind.