SUNDARAMBAL Vs. SUPPIAH PILLAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant a Hindu unmarried girl, sued her father for past maintenance from 20-12-1948 to 20-9-1958 (sic) and future maintenance from the date of the suit. Pending the suit she got employed on 1-6-1956, became a convert to Christianity and married a Christian husband on 7-7-1957. The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, came into force in the meantime on 21-12-1956. The trial Court granted a decree for past maintenance as prayed for but restricted future maintenance upto 23-1-1957 on the erroneous assumption that the said Act came into force on that date. The rate at which maintenance xvas decreed is not material for purposes of this second appeal. The father having appealed against the decree, the lower appellate court allowed the appeal and dismissed the suit on the view that by reason of the first plaintiff's conversion to Christianity she could no longer claim maintenance under the said Act and the Act itself had, to the extent to which it made provision, repealed Hindu law and usage relating to maintenance. Hence the second appeal by the first plaintiff.

(2.) Mr. K. V. Srinivasa Iver the learned counsel for the appellant, contended that as the repeal of Hindu law and usage relating to maintenance took effect only from the date on which the Act came into force, there was nothing in the Act which pendente lite extinguished the first plaintiffs right to maintenance under Hindu law in force until the date of its repeal. On the other hand, Sri. N. S. Srinivasan, the learned counsel for the respondent, urged that the right to sue for maintenance being not a vested right, the law as it stood at the date of the decree governed the rights of the parties. According to him the only law under which the first plaintiff could sustain her claim being the Act and not Hindu law which it had repealed and as by reason of her conversion the Act no longer applied to her, the suit was rightly dismissed by the lower appellate court.

(3.) The relevant provisions of the Act arc these :