The Guardians and Wards Act: Appointment of a Guardian

In one line

Any relative or friend of a minor, or the person who wants the office, or the Collector, may apply to the district court, which appoints or declares a guardian of the person or the property or both, guided by the welfare of the minor.

Sections 1 to 4A: the frame

Section 1. The Act extends to the whole of India and came into force on 1 July 1890. The words excluding Jammu and Kashmir were omitted with effect from 31 October 2019. As extended to Pondicherry it does not apply to the Renoncants of that territory.

Section 2 was a repealing section and has itself been repealed by the Repealing Act 1938.

Section 3: two jurisdictions are saved. The Act is read subject to every enactment relating to any Court of Wards, and nothing in it derogates from the jurisdiction of a Court of Wards or takes away any power possessed by a High Court. The second saving matters: the High Court's own jurisdiction over minors and their estates survives the Act, and it is the same jurisdiction the proviso to section 12 of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act preserves.

Section 4: the definitions.

"Minor" means a person who under the Indian Majority Act 1875 is deemed not to have attained his majority.

"Guardian" means a person having the care of the person of a minor or of his property, or of both his person and property. The same words as section 4(b) of the 1956 Act.

"Ward" means a minor for whose person or property, or both, there is a guardian. So "ward" is a relative term: a minor becomes a ward only once he has a guardian.

"District Court" has the meaning given in the Code of Civil Procedure and includes a High Court in the exercise of its ordinary original civil jurisdiction.

"The Court", substituted in 1926, means the District Court having jurisdiction to entertain the application; or, where a guardian has been appointed or declared, the court that appointed or declared him, or, in any matter relating to the person of the ward, the District Court having jurisdiction in the place where the ward for the time being ordinarily resides; or, for a transferred proceeding, the court of the officer to whom it was transferred.

"Collector" means the chief officer in charge of the revenue administration of a district, and includes any officer the State Government appoints to be a Collector for the purposes of the Act. "Prescribed" means prescribed by rules made by the High Court. Clause (7) was omitted in 1951.

Section 4A, inserted in 1926, lets the High Court empower a subordinate civil officer to dispose of proceedings under the Act, lets the District Judge transfer proceedings to such an officer or to his own court, and lets him declare the transferee court to be deemed the court that appointed the guardian.