District Collectors are bound to protect the life and property of senior citizens within their jurisdiction and ensure that they are able to live with security and dignity in accordance with the provisions of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 and rules framed there under, the Madras High Court Bench here has said.
Justice S. Vimala made the observation while disposing of a writ petition filed by Kottakkalai, a 70-year-old retired government servant of Madurai, accusing his daughter-in-law of driving him and his wife out of their house after a rift with his son who had applied for divorce and attempting to usurp the three-storey building constructed by him with hard-earned money. The judge directed the Collector to look into a representation made by the petitioner on June 9 in the light of the provisions of the Tamil Nadu Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Rules, provide an opportunity of hearing to the elderly man as well his daughter-in-law and then forward his complaint to Commissioner of Police for providing police protection, if necessary.
Quoting American engineer Robert H. Goddard who said: “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these,” the judge said ageing by itself presented relentless problems due to changes in body, mind, thinking process and living pattern.
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“Even though the senior citizens are gifted with experience and knowledge and thus remain as a reservoir of human resource, they face humiliation, ill-treatment and neglect only on account of ageing,” Ms. Justice Vimala said, and pointed out that they also face economic, psychological and physical problems, thereby requiring State intervention to ensure a dignified life to them.
The judge also recalled that while tabling the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, 2007 in the Lok Sabha, the then Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment had said among many other things, “the Bill proposes to make it obligatory on the persons who inherit the property of their aged relatives to maintain them.”