What the case was about
Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 was substituted by amendment in 2005 to confer coparcenary rights on daughters in the same manner as sons. Two earlier two-judge benches of the Supreme Court had reached inconsistent conclusions on how that amendment applied — in particular, whether a daughter could claim if her father had died before the amendment came into force. The question was referred to a larger bench.
What the Court held
- A daughter is a coparcener by birth in the same manner as a son. The right arises by birth, not by the amendment.
- It is therefore not necessary that the father coparcener was alive on 9 September 2005 for a daughter to claim.
- Rights that had already crystallised through a partition effected before 20 December 2004 are not disturbed.
- The statutory fiction of partition under the unamended proviso to section 6 did not bring about an actual partition or disruption of the coparcenary.
- Daughters are to be given a share equal to a son in pending proceedings, including where a preliminary decree has already been passed.
- The earlier inconsistent position taken in Prakash v. Phulavati was disapproved.
Why it matters to you
Of the eight judgments in this library, this is the one most likely to affect a transaction you are actually running, and it is almost never raised by anyone in the room.
Level 2 taught you that the unmutated inheritance is the commonest defect in a title chain, and that omitted heirs are the commonest source of a claim surfacing years after a sale. This judgment materially widens who those heirs are. A holding treated within a family as having passed to sons — sometimes decades ago, sometimes with a mutation already recorded on that basis — may be subject to claims by daughters who were never counted.
Practical consequence: when you map heirs on a joint or inherited holding, count the daughters, and have an advocate advise on their position rather than accepting the family's own account of who holds what.
Limits and qualifications
The judgment concerns Hindu Mitakshara coparcenary property and Hindu Succession Act succession. It does not apply to persons governed by other personal law systems, and self-acquired property devolves differently from coparcenary property. The saving for partitions effected before 20 December 2004 is significant and its application to a particular family is a question of fact and evidence. Whether a given holding is coparcenary or self-acquired is itself frequently disputed. Every one of these is a matter for an advocate.