SC Clears The Confusion Over Section 6 Of The Hindu Succession Act
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-08-12 12:22:08
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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The Supreme Court has put to rest all the confusion arising out of different interpretations of the amended Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) giving equal rights to daughters in the Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) property. The court has said that daughters will have equal share in such property right from 1956 (when the HAS was codified) as per the amended section 6 which came into force on September 9, 2005. That amendment had made daughters coparceners in the HUF, thereby giving them the same rights hitherto enjoyed by the sons of the family.
Categorically stating that the amended section will operate with retrospective effect, the court said that all daughters born before September 2005 will have equal share in the HUF property irrespective of whether the father was alive or not. The cut-off date of September 9, 2005 will apply only for deciding the property that belonged to the HUF on that date.
What this means is that daughters cannot claim inheritance rights or raise any dispute over HUF property that was disposed of by whatever means prior to that date. The property could have been sold off, partitioned, given away to charity, gifted to anyone, let out of the possession of the HUF by any other legal means for or without any valuable consideration or otherwise legally alienated in a way that excludes it from the ownership of the HUF. In such a scenario, the daughters cannot raise questions about the transaction that took place before September 9, 2005. They will have equal rights only in the property that was held in the name of the HUF on the cut-off date.
This settles a lot of confusion that was prevailing since different benches of the apex court had interpreted the concerned section in different ways. It provides daughters with the legal right (which was the main intention of the legislature) to inherit HUF property equally with other coparceners without any conditions if all conditions are satisfied. At the same time, it does away with the mischief that could have arisen if a vengeful desire or wrong legal advice had made daughters file cases regarding the HUF property that was disposed of before September 9, 2005.
