Supreme
Court Ruling: A reiteration of Women's Rights
The recent
verdict of the Supreme Court to give daughters equal rights in Ancestral
property was another step towards bridging the still prominent gap that exists
between men and women in our society. The court made it clear that the Hindu
Succession Act of 2005 which states that daughters and sons have equal shares
in family properly will be applicable on all women irrespective of whether they
were born before 2005 or not.
The Hindu
Succession Act (Amendment), 2005
The Act
removed gender discriminatory provisions in the previous gender discriminatory
provisions and gave the following rights to women:
● The
daughter of a coparcener becomes a coparcener in the same manner as a son dpes.
(Coparcener is a person who has equal right in the inheritance of an undivided
property.)
●
The daughter is allotted the same share as is allotted to a son
● The daughter has the same rights in the
coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son
● The
daughter is also subject to the same liability in the coparcenary as that of a
son
The
Verdict
The case
in question that brought up this issue was that of a man claiming his aunts
were not entitled to his grandfather's property. The man, Amar, contended that
since his aunts were born before 1956 the 2005 amendment was all together not
applicable to them. The district courts and the high courts agreed with his
views. But, the Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice A.K. Sikri and
Justice Ashok Bhushan stated that the amendment declared that a daughter ‘shall
by birth' become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as that of a
son.
The court
also observed that the 2005 amendment was carried out, ”on the touchstone of
equality, thus seeking to remove the perceived disability and prejudice to
which a daughter was subjected.”
The Road
Ahead
This year
has been a particularly progressive one in terms of removing gender inequality
as this is the third judgment of the Supreme Court strengthening women's
rights. In August 2017, it was held that talaq-e-biddat was not legally valid,
in January 201i it was held that the legitimacy of an adult woman's marriage
that was a voluntary decision could not be questioned. While we are moving in
the right direction, there is still a long way to go till the time we can proudly
say that women in India are no longer prey to patriarchal thinking.
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