Father Died Before 1994 Sale: Karnataka HC Says 2005 Succession Amendment Doesn’t Erase Daughter’s Inheritance Claim, Lets Suit Proceed

The plaintiff claimed a share in land said to have been purchased by her father in 1928.

Her father died in 1990, and her brother, Vajarappa, died in 1992.

She alleged that she learned at a village panchayat on 15 August 2014 that the defendants had alienated the property, and sought partition and a declaration that the sale deed was not binding on her share.

The petitioners sought rejection of the plaint under Order VII Rule 11(a), (b) and (d) CPC, asserting, among other things, that the plaintiff knew of the transactions, had consented to them, and had filed the suit out of time.

The trial court dismissed that application; the petitioners challenged the dismissal in this revision.

The judgment describes the suit as filed in 2014, although paragraph 11 refers to it as instituted in 2004.

Order VII Rule 11 CPC requires the court to assess the plaint as a whole; ordinarily, the defendants’ written statement and disputed defence material cannot be used to reject it, though rejection is permissible where a legal bar is apparent from the plaint.

Under Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, a daughter may inherit as a Class I heir upon her father’s intestate death; that pre-existing inheritance right is distinct from the coparcenary rights introduced by the 2005 amendment. The proviso to Section 6(1), protecting dispositions and alienations made before 20 December 2004, does not by itself extinguish a share already inherited on the father’s earlier death [*Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma*, (2020) 9 SCC 1; *B. S. Lalitha v. Bhuvanesh* (citation not provided)].

Limitation depends on the nature of the right and relief, and on facts such as knowledge and exclusion from the property; it may be decided under Order VII Rule 11 where the bar is apparent from the plaint, but not where material facts are disputed [*Smt. Uma Devi v. Anand Kumar*, 2025 INSC 434].

The plaint alleged that the plaintiff’s father died in 1990 and that she thereby acquired an inheritance share before the disputed 1994 alienation. The Court held that the 2005 amendment’s protection for earlier transactions did not, on its own, establish that any such pre-existing share had been extinguished.

Whether the property was the father’s separate property, the plaintiff’s resulting share, and the legal effect of her alleged consent were matters requiring adjudication, not determination on the rejection application.

Although the defendants relied on the sale, alleged prior knowledge and consent to establish limitation, those facts were disputed; the registered deed alone did not demonstrate from the plaint that the partition claim was time-barred.

The trial court therefore committed no jurisdictional error in refusing to reject the plaint.

It directed the trial court to decide the suit independently and without being influenced by the High Court’s observations; all interlocutory applications in the revision were closed.