Equal Inheritance Rights to Women
In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court on August 11, 2020 held that daughters, like sons, have an equal birthright to inherit joint Hindu family property. The court ruled that daughters will have equal inheritance rights to those of sons from properties of fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers right from the codification of the law in 1956. Further, it ruled that a daughter could not be denied her share on the ground that her father died before the law came into effect.
Justice Arun Mishra, heading a three-judge Bench, authored the judgement, saying, “A daughter always remains a loving daughter. A son is a son until he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter throughout her life. The daughter shall remain a coparcener throughout life, irrespective of whether her father is alive or not.”
It was also held that the amended Hindu Succession Act, which gives daughters equal rights to ancestral property, will have a retrospective effect. In this respect, a bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra, S Abdul Nazeer, and M R Shah, in a 121-page judgement, cleared the confusion arising from the apex court’s conflicting interpretations of the amended Section 6 of Hindu Succession Act, which came into force from September 9, 2005. Overruling an earlier 2015 decision, the bench said whether the father was alive or not, daughters born before September 9, 2005, too could claim equal right in inheritance. However, daughters, while claiming coparcenary rights, will not be able to question disposal or alienation of ancestral properties by the existing coparceners prior to December 20, 2004, as provided in the amended Section 6.
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The court also clarified that an unregistered oral partition, without any contemporaneous public document, cannot be accepted as the statutory recognised mode of partition.
The court said disputes pending on this question in various courts should be decided within the next six months.
The judgement has given a major boost to the issue of gender justice, as constitutionally envisage. The discrimination is done away with by substituting the provision of Section 6 by the 2005 amendment Act.
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