An amendment asserting coparcenary rights under Section 6 is permissible absent pleaded ouster; limitation remains triable.

The plaintiffs, children of late Smt. Meera Gupta, instituted a partition suit concerning the estate of late Shri Gopal Raj Swarup, including property D-15, Maharani Bagh, New Delhi.

Gopal Raj Swarup died intestate on 28 April 1983, leaving his wife and four children; the plaintiffs claimed through their mother, who died on 29 April 2019 and had allegedly bequeathed her estate to them by a registered Will.

The plaintiffs alleged that the property was acquired and developed from joint Hindu family funds and challenged, inter alia, a family settlement dated 1 July 1977, a DDA conveyance deed dated 28 March 2000 in favour of Defendant No.3, and a Release Deed dated 21 February 2006 in favour of Defendant No.1.

By an application under Order VI Rule 17 CPC, the plaintiffs sought to introduce claims based on the amended Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, pleadings concerning the alleged family settlement and Wills, a challenge to a Special Power of Attorney dated 14 December 1992, and additional declaratory reliefs concerning the DDA conveyance deed.

The defendants opposed the amendment on the grounds that it altered the nature of the suit, introduced time-barred claims, and raised matters allegedly known to the plaintiffs earlier.

Order VI Rule 17 CPC requires amendments necessary for determining the real controversy to be allowed, provided they do not cause injustice, introduce an entirely new and inconsistent cause of action, withdraw an admission, or take away a vested limitation defence.

The Court relied on B.K. Narayana Pillai v. Parameswaran Pillai, (2000) 1 SCC 712; L.J. Leach & Co. Ltd. v. Jardine Skinner & Co., (1957) 1 SCC 72; T.N. Alloy Foundry Co. Ltd. v. T.N. Electricity Board, (2004) 3 SCC 392; Pirgonda Hongonda Patil v. Kalgonda Shidgonda Patil, 1957 SCR 595; and Life Insurance Corporation of India v. Sanjeev Builders (P) Ltd., (2022) 16 SCC 1, which establish that delay or limitation is relevant but not invariably decisive at the amendment stage, and that limitation may be left for trial where it is arguable.

The Court applied amended Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, under which a daughter of a coparcener becomes a coparcener by birth with rights equal to those of a son, subject to the statutory protection for partitions effected before 20 December 2004.

Article 110 of the Limitation Act applies to a suit by a person excluded from joint family property where exclusion or ouster is established.

Ouster requires hostile animus, long and uninterrupted exclusive possession, and open assertion of exclusive ownership to the knowledge of the other co-owner, as explained in Vidya Devi v. Prem Prakash, (1995) 4 SCC 496.

Section 387 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, further provides that a decision in succession-certificate proceedings does not finally determine rights or status in subsequent substantive proceedings.

The Court held that the suit remained one for partition and that the proposed pleadings merely supplied an additional legal basis and material particulars for adjudicating the parties’ competing claims over the same property.

The invocation of amended Section 6 did not create a new cause of action because the plaintiffs already claimed through their mother’s share in the family property; it constituted an additional approach to the existing controversy.

Article 110 was held inapplicable because the defendants had not pleaded or established that the plaintiffs’ mother had been ousted from the property.

Since ouster is a factual question requiring proof of hostile and exclusive possession, the mere fact that she did not seek partition after the 2005 amendment could not defeat the plaintiffs’ claim at the amendment stage.

The proposed prayer concerning the 2000 DDA conveyance deed was considered consequential to the existing challenge to the deed and the plaintiffs’ claim that the property belonged beneficially to all coparceners.

As to the Special Power of Attorney, the plaint did not conclusively establish that the plaintiffs knew of it when the suit was filed; therefore, the question of limitation required evidence and could be determined at trial rather than by refusing amendment.

The Court also emphasised that the defendants would retain the right to raise limitation and other objections in the amended pleadings and at trial.

The amended plaint was directed to be taken on record, and the defendants were permitted to file amended written statements within the time prescribed under the Delhi High Court (Original Side) Rules, 2018.