Supreme Court Restores Daughter’s Right in Ancestral Property: Sets Aside High Court Review Order by Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and S.V.N. Bhatti

The Supreme Court of India, in a more recent and important case, resolved a complicated legal matter in which it had to do with inheritance rights, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 and the exact scope of a court’s authority to review its own decisions. The case which emerged as a result of a family partition suit sheds invaluable light on the circumstances in which and how a preliminary decree may be amended and what is a rational ground upon which it may be reviewed. The Supreme Court has reinstated the principle of review jurisdiction not being a veiled form of appellate authority and that it must be applied with a lot of caution in order to preserve the finality of judicial determinations by overturning its order to suspend review of decisions of the High Court.

The Case Facts: Family Feud Property.

The judicial fight was initiated by a partition suit, OS No. 192 of 2000, which Subramani initiated against his father Munusamy Naidu in the Court of the District Munsiff at Ponneri. The suit was aimed at dividing the property of its ancestry into two equal parts with one part being shared between Subramani and Malleeswari, the daughter of Munasamy Naidu, who is the plaintiff in this case and was not initially a party to the suit. On February 25, 2003, a preliminary decree was issued ex-parte; it gave the requested partition.

Under the decree, Munasamy Naidu made a sale deed of certain properties to the first respondent K. Suguna and a settlement deed to Malleeswari. The suit was pleaded against Malleeswari who became the legal heir after the death of Munasamy Naidu. She subsequently applied to amend the preliminary decree, IA No. 1199 of 2018. She claimed that she was entitled to a one-third portion of the properties because the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 (HSA 2005), entitles daughters to receive equal criminarial rights equal to those of males. She also asserted one-third of her father’s share as a result of his will making her total claim share two-thirds. The wife of K. Suguna and the wife of Subramanian were against this amendment. They argued that the application was barred on the basis of time lapse, Malleeswari could not challenge the sale deed to Suguna as she was a witness to the same, and the amendment of the year 2005 was inapplicable as the preliminary decree had already been passed in the year 2003, prior to the amendment.

The High Court and the Trial Court Decisions.

The Trial Court refused Malleeswari’s application to amend the preliminary decree, indicating that she had been imprisoned only as a legal representative of her father and could only inherit the shares identified in the 2003 decree. It was also believed that the HSA of 2005 became ineffective retroactively and the principle of estoppel was applicable to the sale deeds as Malleeswari signed them as a witness. The judgment made by the court was that a preliminary decree is a final decision of rights and cannot be reformated in order to radically alter the result.

Malleeswari appealed this ruling to the High Court which, on the first appeal, reversed the decision of the Trial Court and gave her the right to obtain her one-third portion. The High Court rationale was that, on the principles of the landmark case of Malleeswari being a daughter and a coparcener, she was entitled to a share in the ancestral property.

Vineeta Sharma v Rakesh Sharma. But, the first respondent, K. Suguna, submitted a review application to which the High Court granted the application and the case was returned to the Trial Court to be reconsidered. The appeal to the Supreme Court involved this review order that practically overturned the previous ruling of the High Court.

Cases in The Supreme Court Analysis of Review Jurisdiction.

The essence of the judgment of the Supreme Court depends on the review order reviewed by the Higher Court being in compliance with the principles of authority over review jurisdiction. The Court also conducted keen scrutiny of the scope and limits of review power as presented by Section 114 and Order 47, Rule 1 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908. It was repeated that review is not a replacement for an appeal. An appellate court can, and indeed will, correct any type of error but a review court cannot and cannot replace a view, only correct it.

The Court emphasised that the authority to review is an exception to the ordinary rule of last resort and is designed to avoid a miscarriage of justice or to right significant and palpable errors. Rehearing and correcting a wrong decision cannot be done using them. It was further stated in the judgment that review grounds are restricted to the discovery of new and material evidence that was not available before, a mistake and error that are evident on the face of the record, and any other adequate reason similar to the first two reasons. The Court concluded that the review order of the High Court failed to point out the error on the face of the record but reappreciated the case and overturned its prior determinations. The Supreme Court found this move to be beyond review jurisdiction and review had been turned into an appeal in disguise.

The Supreme Court reversed approved the High Court’s review order and reinstated its previous ruling dated September 23, 2022, which had approved the Trial Court’s dismissal of the application made by Malleeswari on the basis of the same. The Court also instructed the Trial Court to clear all pending applications in quick time, ideally within three months.

This ruling is important as a reminder of the severe constraints on the authority of review by a court. It confirms that an appeal is the remedy for a perceived mistake in a judgment, not review, except where the error is one manifest on the face of the record. The decision safeguards judicial decision integrity and the avoidance of issues that need to be re-litigated endlessly. Moreover the Supreme Court by reinstating the previous order of the High Court impliedly accepted the applicability of the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, to the claim of the appellant, which not only highlighted the legal status of the right of a daughter to an equal share of ancestral property, but also the fact that the right of a daughter to share the property of the deceased ancestor existed even when a preliminary decree was obtained prior to the amendment. This case will be used as a guideline in all future cases that will concern reviewing jurisdiction and Hindu succession law.