KUNJA SAHU Vs. BHAGABAN MOHANTY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a plaintiffs' appeal in a suit for declaration that the suit lands are their ancestral joint family properties and that defendant 1 has not acquired any title thereto by virtue of a sale -deed dated 27 -2 -1940, executed by defendant 2. The plaintiffs and the husband of defendant 2 were members of a -joint Hindu Mitakshara family at the time of the latter's death. On his death, defendant 2 succeeded to her husband's interest in the family properties under the Hindu Women's Eight to Property Act She transferred her this interest in favour of defendant 1 by the aforesaid sale -deed. The suit was resisted on the ground that defendant a had the right to alienate and the said alienation is binding on the plaintiffs. There was some dispute as between the parties as to whether the claimed properties were ancestral joint family properties. That controversy, however, has been set at rest and has not been re -agitated here. In this appeal, we shall proceed oh the assumption that Judhisthir was joint in mass and estate at the time of his death.

(2.) THE learned Munsif dismissed the plaintiffs' suit on the findings that the properties, in dispute, were joint family properties and defendant 2 had no right. The learned lower appellate Court reversed the decree of the trial Court holding that defendant a had the right of alienation under 3. 8 (3), Hindu Women's Eight to Property Act, as extended to agricultural lands in Orissa. Hence the second appeal by the plaintiffs.

(3.) THE object of the Act is remedial and benevolent. The rule of survivorship that stands in the way of widow succeeding to her husband's estate in a joint family property is suspended for her benefit. This suspension is not intended to disrupt the coparcenary except in so far as it is necessary to give the widow an independent status which can be worked out so as to make her economically independent. As observed by Mayne, in his commentary on Hindu Law, in Oh. XVII 'Woman's Estate' para. 635: