Vineeta Sharma v Rakesh Sharma

Facts

• The 2005 Amendment to the Hindu Succession Act substituted Section 6, conferring coparcenary rights on daughters equal to sons by birth. Earlier Supreme Court benches had taken conflicting positions: Prakash v Phulavati (2016) held the father coparcener must be alive on the date of the amendment, while Danamma v Amar (2018) allowed claims even where the father died before the amendment. Vineeta Sharma raised a claim to coparcenary property as a daughter where her father had died before 2005.

Issue

1. Whether a daughter's right to become a coparcener under the amended Section 6 requires that the father coparcener be alive as on 9 September 2005, the date the amendment came into force.

Held

• The unamended Section 6 created coparcenary by birth for sons; the amended Section 6 extends this to daughters as an incident of birth, not a conferment contingent on the father being alive at a particular date. Since coparcenary right is by birth, the daughter's right does not depend on whether her father coparcener was living on 9 September 2005. The amendment is not retrospective but retroactive: it operates on an antecedent event (birth) to confer rights going forward, without disturbing already concluded partitions. Prakash v Phulavati was disapproved to the extent it required the father to be alive; Danamma v Amar was approved on the outcome but clarified on reasoning. Registered partitions and testamentary dispositions made before 20 December 2004 remain unaffected.

Ratio Decidendi

Coparcenary rights of daughters under the substituted Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act flow from birth and are not conditional on the survival of the father coparcener as on the date the amendment took effect. The amendment applies retroactively based on the fact of birth, subject to protecting already concluded partitions and dispositions.