Family Law

Prakash v. Phulavati

(2016) 2 SCC 36

Facts

Phulavati filed a partition suit in 1992 seeking a share in properties previously held by her father, Yeshwanth Chandrakant Upadhye.
Her father had died on 18 February 1988.
While the litigation was pending, Parliament enacted the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005.
Phulavati amended her claim and argued that she had become a coparcener equal to her brothers under the substituted Section 6.
The Karnataka High Court accepted that argument and awarded her an enlarged 1/7 share in several properties.
Her brothers appealed, arguing that:
the father had died long before 9 September 2005;
succession had opened in 1988;
vested shares could not be enlarged through the later amendment.

Whether the 2005 amendment applied where the coparcener-father had died before 9 September 2005.
Whether a pending partition suit allowed the daughter to claim the amended coparcenary right.

The Court held that the substituted Section 6 was prospective.
According to this judgment:
the daughter had to be alive on 9 September 2005; and
the coparcener through whom she claimed also had to be alive.
Where the father died before the amendment:
succession opened on his death;
the shares of his heirs crystallised under the old Section 6;
those vested rights were not reopened merely because partition by metes and bounds remained pending.
Dispositions and partitions protected by the amendment remained unaffected.

Yeshwanth died in 1988, approximately seventeen years before the amendment.
Under the law then governing:
a notional partition occurred for calculating his interest;
his share devolved upon the appropriate heirs;
their rights crystallised at that time.
The Court held that a later substantive amendment could not disturb those vested rights without clear retrospective language.
The words “on and from the commencement” indicated prospective operation.
The fact that Phulavati’s suit remained pending did not change the date on which succession opened.
A new law may apply to pending proceedings only where the law itself governs the underlying rights.
Since the Court held that Section 6 did not apply to a pre-2005 death, pendency could not enlarge her share.
Her entitlement therefore had to be calculated under the unamended Hindu Succession Act.

The Supreme Court allowed the brothers’ appeal.
Phulavati could not claim coparcenary rights under the 2005 amendment because her father had died in 1988.
Present legal position: the requirement that the father must have been alive on 9 September 2005 was expressly overruled by the larger Bench in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma.
Prakash v. Phulavati is now mainly important for understanding the earlier conflicting interpretation.
Use this case for: the pre-Vineeta Sharma approach requiring a living daughter of a living coparcener.