What happened
The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 replaced Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 with effect from 9 September 2005. The new section says that in a joint Hindu family governed by Mitakshara law, the daughter of a coparcener shall “by birth become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son”. Courts then divided on who that covered. In Prakash v. Phulavati (2016) a two-judge bench read the section as helping only daughters whose father was also alive on 9 September 2005. In Danamma @ Suman Surpur v. Amar (2018) a differently constituted two-judge bench allowed a share to daughters whose father had died years before that date. High Courts followed one line or the other, and in one of the connected matters a High Court had gone further still, treating the substituted section as though it had been in force since 1956. Because two benches of equal strength had taken conflicting views, the question was referred to a larger bench. A batch of appeals and special leave petitions — led by Vineeta Sharma's — was heard together. The Court was not deciding who owned what in any one family. It was answering the question of law, and it sent the individual matters back to be decided on their merits afterwards.
What the court held
The three judges answered the reference in five parts. **Status.** The substituted Section 6 confers the status of coparcener on a daughter born before or after the amendment, in the same manner as a son, with the same rights and the same liabilities. **From when.** A daughter born earlier can claim those rights with effect from 9 September 2005, subject to the savings in Section 6(1) for any disposition, alienation, partition or testamentary disposition that had already taken place before 20 December 2004. **The father need not be alive.** Because the right in coparcenary is *by birth*, it is not necessary that the father-coparcener should have been living on 9 September 2005. This is the sentence that decided the case, and it is the one that had divided the earlier benches. **Notional partition is only a fiction.** The deemed partition under the old proviso to Section 6 was a device for working out a deceased coparcener's share where he left a Class-I female heir. It did not actually break up the coparcenary. So even where a preliminary decree has already been passed, daughters are to be given a share equal to a son's in the pending final-decree proceedings or in appeal. **Oral partition will rarely defeat the claim.** Given the Explanation to Section 6(5), a plea of oral partition cannot be accepted as the statutory mode of partition, which is a registered deed or a decree of a court. Only in exceptional cases, where the plea is supported by public documents and the partition is finally evinced in the same manner as if it had been effected by a decree, may it be accepted. A partition plea resting on oral evidence alone is to be rejected outright. The Court overruled the contrary views in Prakash v. Phulavati and in Mangammal v. T. B. Raju, and partly overruled Danamma to the extent it conflicted. Recording that suits and appeals on the point were pending across the country and had already been delayed by the conflicting decisions, it requested that those matters be decided, as far as possible, within six months.
The law behind it
The whole case turns on Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, as substituted by the 2005 amendment. Sub-section (1) provides that on and from the commencement of the amending Act, in a joint Hindu family governed by Mitakshara law, the daughter of a coparcener shall —
- by birth become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son;
- have the same rights in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son; and
- be subject to the same liabilities in respect of that property as a son.
The proviso to sub-section (1) protects any disposition or alienation, including a partition or testamentary disposition, that took place before 20 December 2004.
Section 6(5) says the section does not apply to a partition effected before 20 December 2004, and its Explanation defines “partition” narrowly: a partition made by a deed of partition duly registered under the Registration Act, 1908, or a partition effected by a decree of a court. That definition is why an oral family arrangement usually cannot be used to shut a daughter out.
Two limits are worth stating plainly, because they are where most confusion starts. First, this is about coparcenary (ancestral) property in a Mitakshara joint family — not about a father's self-acquired property, which he remains free to leave by will under Section 30, and which passes under Section 8 if he leaves none. Second, it operates through the Hindu Succession Act, so it does not govern families whose succession is regulated by a different personal law.
You can read the statutory provisions in our legal codes reference, and the underlying ideas in the knowledge base.
What it changed
Vineeta Sharma ended fifteen years of uncertainty about a provision that had been meant to settle the question in the first place. Prakash v. Phulavati, which had shut out daughters whose fathers died before 9 September 2005, was overruled; Mangammal was overruled; Danamma was partly overruled. Hundreds of pending partition suits and appeals had to be reopened on the point, which is why the Court asked that they be disposed of within six months. Its second holding has been quietly as consequential as the first. By reading the Explanation to Section 6(5) strictly, the Court made it very hard to defeat a daughter's claim with an undocumented family arrangement — the most common way such claims had been resisted in practice. The judgment interprets a statute rather than the Constitution, so Parliament could in principle change the position. It has not.
What this means for you
If your family holds ancestral Mitakshara property, a daughter's claim to a share does not depend on when her father died. It does not depend on whether she was born before 2005, and it does not depend on whether she is married. The right attaches at birth; the amendment simply made it enforceable from 9 September 2005. What *can* defeat the claim is narrow, and it is worth knowing precisely. A partition completed before 20 December 2004 by a **registered partition deed** or by a **decree of a court** stands, and so does a disposition, alienation or testamentary disposition made before that date. An assertion that the family “divided everything orally years ago” will not ordinarily be enough, and a plea resting on oral evidence alone is to be rejected outright. A pending case is not a lost case either. Even where a court has already passed a preliminary decree working out shares without the daughters, the Supreme Court has said the equal share must still be given in the final-decree proceedings or in appeal. The boundary to keep in mind runs between ancestral and self-acquired property. This judgment is about the first. A father's self-acquired property is his to leave by will, and a valid will has to be proved in court before it does anything — which is a separate fight, and a common one.
What to do
1. **Work out what kind of property it is.** Coparcenary (ancestral) property and self-acquired property follow completely different rules, and almost every family argument about inheritance starts by getting this wrong. Gather title deeds, revenue and mutation records, and older documents showing how the property came into the family. 2. **Look for a registered partition deed or a decree.** If one exists, check its date against **20 December 2004**. That date, not 9 September 2005, is the cut-off in the proviso and in Section 6(5). 3. **Do not be put off by a claim of oral partition.** Ask what public documents support it. On its own, oral evidence is not enough. 4. **If a suit is already pending**, raise the point in the final-decree proceedings or in appeal rather than assuming a preliminary decree has closed the door. 5. **Get legal help.** Partition suits involve limitation, valuation and often mesne profits, and are not sensible to run alone. Free legal aid is available through your District Legal Services Authority under the NALSA framework if you qualify. 6. You can also ask our AI assistant to walk you through the difference between ancestral and self-acquired property before you see a lawyer.
Source
Supreme Court of India, Justices Arun Mishra, S. Abdul Nazeer and M. R. Shah, 11 August 2020. Citation: AIR 2020 SC 3717. Read the full judgment .
This explainer was written from the primary judgment text, not from news reports.