Case Title: VINEETA SHARMA V. RAKESH SHARMA
The Supreme Court has ruled, a daughter shall get a share under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 regardless of whether her father was alive or not at the time of the amendment.
Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, which allowed daughters equal rights in an ancestral property, was the subject of a number of challenges, and Justice Arun Mishra delivered the ruling. This case presented an important legal question: can this act have a retroactive effect?
"Daughter continues to be a loving daughter throughout life. Daughters must be given similar privileges as males. Whether the daughter's father is still alive or not, she must be a coparcener for the rest of her life," Justice Mishra stated.
The court disregarded the opposing conclusions reached in Prakash v. Phulavati and Mangammal v. T.B. Raju. This is what the court decided:
Daughters born before or after the modification are given the same rights and obligations as sons under the terms of the substituted Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
With effect from 9.9.2005, the daughter who was born earlier can assert her rights, with the exception of any disposition, alienation, partition, or testamentary disposition that occurred before the 20th day of December 2004 as stipulated in Section 6(1).
Since the right to coparceny is acquired through birth, the father coparcener's existence as of September 9, 2005, is not required.
The Hindu Succession Act of 1956's addendum to Section 6 did not really cause the split or disruption of the coparcenary; rather, it established the formal fiction of partition. The fiction was only used to determine the dead coparcener's share when a female heir of Class I, as defined in the Act of 1956's Schedule, or a male relative of such a female, survived him. The terms of the replacement Section 6 must be fully implemented. The girls are to be allocated a portion in the coparcenary equivalent to that of a son in the ongoing processes for the final decree or in an appeal, despite the fact that a preliminary decree has been passed.
A plea of oral partition cannot be regarded as the legally recognised method of partition achieved by a deed of partition validly registered under the Registration Act, 1908, or effected by court order due to the strict restrictions of Explanation to Section 6(5) of the Act of 1956. However, in extraordinary circumstances when a claim of oral partition is backed by public records and is ultimately shown in a way that makes it appear as though it were the result of a court order, it may be accepted. A partition claim based only on oral testimony cannot be accepted and must be flatly denied.