MUMBAI: The Bombay
high court has clarified that a change in law in 2005 to bring daughters on a
par with sons over rights to joint family property can be applied
retrospectively.
Daughters born any
time earlier than September 9, 2005, are entitled to equal rights for
inheritance of jointly-owned family property, the court held on Thursday.
The judgment
delivered by a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah, Justice M S
Sanklecha and Justice M S Sonak has freed a large number of Hindu women from
the son-centric heirship laws that existed till 2005. Now, they will get a
share in properties worth crores of rupees in the city.
The judgment said
that equality would now apply to even girls born prior to 1956, when the Hindu
Succession Act first came into effect, but hadn't given daughters equal rights
which sons enjoyed since birth over joint family property. In September 2005, a
progressive amendment to the Succession Act conferred equal inheritance rights
at birth even to daughters over joint family property. But daughters, the HC
clarified are entitled to these equal rights only if they were alive and such
property existed as joint family property in September 2005, when the amendment
came into force.
The high court said
that all daughters born any time earlier but alive as on September 9, 2005,
have equal rights as sons, but heirs of daughters who died before that date do
not get any benefit under the law.
The question before
the bench in a clutch of cases was whether the 2005 law could be retroactive.
The issue was referred to the larger bench by a single judge of the high court
in June. Justice R G Ketkar had doubted the correctness of a conflicting
finding by a two-judge bench earlier in 2012. The division bench had held that
the equality to daughters would be available only prospectively to those born
after September 2005.
Ram Apte, senior
counsel appearing for a woman born prior to 2005 who was fighting with her
brothers for partition of a joint property, had argued that the modified law
had to be treated as applicable without a cut-off date and that a daughter's
rights at birth must be recognized retroactively as if they existed when the
succession laws were first legislated in June 1956.
The high court said,
"In cases of socio-economic legislations, like the one we are concerned
with, we must apply the purposive rule of interpretation to find out the true
meaning of the statute."
Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
