VEMUGANTI VENKATA KALYANI Vs. NYAYAPATHI PADMAVATHAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiff in O. S. No. 348 of 1998, on the file of the learned additional Senior Civil Judge, Guntur, is the appellant. For the sake of convenience, the parties are referred to, as arrayed in the suit.

(2.) PLAINTIFF, defendant No. 2 (since dead, represented by her legal representatives) and defendant No. 3 are the daughters of the first defendant. Their father, Nyapathi Srinivasa Rao, died in 1949, leaving behind him, his wife and daughters. He did not have any male issues. The plaintiff filed the suit, for partition and separate possession of the suit schedule house. She pleaded that her father left certain items of immovable property, and the first defendant constructed a house in a plot of land at Guntur, by using the sale proceeds or income from the other properties. It was her case that the first defendant promised that she would divide the suit schedule property, into four equal parts and give one share each to herself and her two sisters, but refused to act upon such promise.

(3.) DEFENDANT No. 2 supported the case of the plaintiff. The first defendant filed written statement, pleading that she succeeded to the land, on which the suit schedule house was constructed, on the death of her husband, and the limited estate, which accrued to her, under the prevalent law, had enlarged into an absolute one, under Section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (for short "1956 Act" ). She pleaded that she constructed the house, by utilizing her stridhana property, and that neither the plaintiff nor the defendants 2 and 3 have any right over it. She made a reference to O. S. No. 79 of 1977, on the file of the subordinate Judge, Guntur, filed by the plaintiff herein, for specific performance, against her, and urged that the plaintiff herself recognized her (1st defendant's) absolute rights over the suit schedule property, and thereby, she is estoped from filing the present suit.