The Supreme Court has affirmed that a woman belonging to a Scheduled Tribe is entitled to an equal share in ancestral property, in alignment with constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination.
A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Joymalya Bagchi remarked, “Unless otherwise prescribed in law, denying the female heir a right in the property only exacerbates gender division and discrimination, which the law should ensure to weed out.”
The Court held that this issue raised a constitutional violation under Article 14. As per the judgment, “There appears to be no rational nexus or reasonable classification for only males to be granted succession over the property of their forebears and not women, more so in the case where no prohibition to such effect can be shown to be prevalent as per law.”
Referring to Article 15(1), which bars the State from discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth, the bench noted that this provision—when read alongside Articles 38 and 46—underscores the broader constitutional vision of eliminating gender discrimination.
In this context, the Court allowed a civil appeal filed by Ram Charan and others, the legal heirs of Dhaiya, a woman from a Scheduled Tribe, invoking the principles of justice, equity and good conscience.
Reinforcing its stance, the bench said it firmly believed that in light of constitutional guarantees and the principles of fairness, “the appellant-plaintiffs, being Dhaiya’s legal heirs, are entitled to their equal share in the property.”
The Court observed, “One would think that in this day and age, where great strides have been made in realising the constitutional goal of equality, this court would not need to intervene for equality between the successors of a common ancestor and the same should be a given, irrespective of their biological differences, but it is not so.”
Although the appellants had argued they followed Hindu customs, the Court clarified that Section 2(2) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, clearly excluded Scheduled Tribes from its ambit, making this irrelevant.
Further criticizing the assumptions of the lower courts, the bench pointed out that the trial courts incorrectly presumed that daughters had no inheritance rights and placed the burden of disproving this on the appellants. It emphasized, “An alternate scenario was also possible where not exclusion, but inclusion could have been presumed and the defendants then could have been asked to show that women were not entitled to inherit property. This patriarchal predisposition appears to be an inference from Hindu law, which has no place in the present case.”
As neither party could substantiate the existence of a specific community law or customary practice, the Court concluded that the matter must be resolved through the principle of ‘justice, equity and good conscience’.
The appellants asserted that their mother—one of six siblings, including five sons and one daughter—had an equal claim to the ancestral property of her father.
Had the lower courts’ reasoning prevailed, the Court noted, women or their descendants could be denied inheritance merely due to lack of explicit customary support. In response, the Court stated, “However, customs too, like the law, cannot remain stuck in time and others cannot be allowed to take refuge in customs or hide behind them to deprive others of their right.”
The bench also praised the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 as a “most commendable” step that recognized daughters as coparceners in joint family property.
The bench concluded, “Granted that no such custom of female succession could be established, but nonetheless it is also equally true that a custom to the contrary also could not be shown in the slightest, much less proved. That being the case, denying Dhaiya her share in her father’s property, when the custom is silent, would violate her right to equality vis-à-vis her brothers or those of her legal heirs vis-à-vis their cousin.”