AMAR SINGH Vs. BALDEV SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN these two cases the question for consideration of the Full Bench on the validity of section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act, (No. 30) of 1956, (hereinafter referred to as the Act), may be formulated thus-

(2.) THE second case has been withdrawn to this Court on an application, Civil Miscellaneous no. 1548 of 1959, under Article 228 of the Constitution, the question as formulated above having been raised, on the facts of the case, in the trial Court. This case concerns of inheritance of one Deva Singh jat, including agricultural land, upon whose before the coming into force of the Act, his widow Sham Kaur succeeded to the same holding a widow's limited estate. On 1-9-1958, Sham Kaur made a will of the land in favour of the defendants She died on 10-4-1958. The will is impugned by the plaintiffs, claiming themselves to be the collaterals of Deva Singh and on the allegation that the land is ancestral qua them, on the ground that Sham Kaur had, under custom, no power by a testamentary disposition to injure their reversionary rights in the land and that that will is not binding upon those rights. The defendants have taken as one of the defences that Sham Kumar, on the date of the will, had become full owner of the land by virtue of section 14 of the Act. The plaintiff's have then questioned the validity of that section in the manner as the question is stated.

(3.) THE provisions of section 14 of the Act are: