The Chhattisgarh High Court held earlier this month that a daughter is not entitled to inherit the property of her deceased father if he died before 1956, the year the Hindu Succession Act came into force.

A daughter can only claim a right to such property if the father does not have a male child, the court said.

Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas noted that in cases where the father died before 1956, succession would be governed by the Mitakshara school of Hindu law, which applied before the Hindu Succession Act came into effect.

Before 1956, Mitakshara was one of the two branches of Hindu law that governed inheritance practices in India – the other being the Dayabhaga school.

Vyas, in his judgement from October 13, said: “Under the Mitakshara law, even the self-acquired property of a male devolved exclusively upon his male issue, and only in the absence of such male issue did it pass to other heirs…”

The court further referred to the Hindu Law of Inheritance Amendment Act, 1929, noting that it merely extended the list of heirs in limited circumstances, but did not alter the fundamental principle that sons took precedence over daughters.

The suit was filed by a woman who claimed a share in her father’s property, arguing that she had the right to inheritance by birth. The woman died while the legal proceedings were underway.

The family of her brother contested the claim, contending that as the father died around 1950-’51, the earlier Mitakshara law applied, and not the Hindu Succession Act. The defendants contended that the Mitakshara law excluded married daughters from inheritance if the son was alive.

Both the trial court and the first appellate court had agreed with the defendants’ argument, and had dismissed the woman’s claim.

On October 13, the High Court also found no grounds for interference, and dismissed the second appeal. The judge referred to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Arshnoor Singh v. Harpal Kaur (2020) and Arunachala Gounder v. Ponnusamy (2022), reaffirming that prior to 1956, a daughter could inherit her father’s separate property only in the absence of a surviving male heir.

The court held that the entire property had lawfully passed on to the woman’s brother, and subsequently, to his descendants. There was no illegality in the mutation of the property in their names, it said.

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