MANCHE GOWDA Vs. BASAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This second appeal arises out of a suit filed by the plaintiff for partition and possession of her snare in the plaint schedule properties. The plaintiff is the step-mother of the defendant who has become the sole surviving coparcener of the family after his father's death. The plaintiff claimed in the plaint as originally filed a 1/4th share in the properties and later by an amendment she claimed 1/3rd. Both the lower Courts have awarded a l/3rd share to her and the defendant has appealed

(2.) The only point that arises in. this appeal is the share to which the plaintiff is entitled. The appellant contends that it is only 1/4th while the respondent urges that the lower Courts have rightly decreed a third share in her favour. The lower Courts have assumed that she is entitled to a l/3rd share and there is no discussion in this matter at all. There are also no reported decisions of this Court directly bearing on this matter and there can of course be no precedents in Courts outside the State as the question arises under the Hindu Law Women's Rights Act which is peculiar to Mysore. Section 8 of that Act declares who are all the females entitled to claim a share at a partition and the mother-which expression includes a step-mother-is of course entitled to claim a share; and where joint family property passes to a single coparcener by survivorship, it shall so pass subject to the rights to shares of the classes of females enumerated earlier in that section. Under Section 8(2) such share shall be fixed as follows:

(3.) It is contended by Mr. K.S. Puttaswamy learned counsel for the respondent, that Section 8, Clause (2)(b) applies to this ease and that the plaintiff as the mother is entitled to one-half of the share of the son, the defendant, and consequently she would be entitled to a third of the properties while the defendant would be entitled to 2/3rds. For the appellant Mr. D.M. Chandrasekhar, his learned counsel, has contended that it is Clause (3)(a) that applies as it is a case of a widow who is claiming a share and that she is entitled to get only one-half of what her husband, if he were alive, would receive as his share. It must be observed that nowhere in that section have any female relatives been awarded more than one-half or one-fourth of the shares of a husband or a son or a brother or a father and it is not clear why if a mother is claiming a share from her only son, as in this case, she should be given a larger share than what she would have been entitled to, had she been claiming, say from others like her daughter-in-law or a brother of her Husband or his widow or her father-in-law. The son has obviously a, better and stronger claim for consideration than those others as he would have to perform the ceremonies of his father and mother and other religious rites and perpetuate the family line and maintain the family's prestige.