Tribal women too are entitled to inherit an equal share of property together with their male counterparts or coparceners, because the Madras High Court has held and directed the State authorities to provoke steps for notifying that each one Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the State can be ruled by the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
Justice S.M. Subramaniam identified that the notification below Section 2(2) of the Act might be issued solely by the Centre. Hence, he directed the High Court Registry to ship a replica of his judgment to the Chief Secretary in order that the State authorities might prevail upon the Centre to problem the notification on the earliest.
The instructions had been issued whereas dismissing an Appeal Suit filed in 2018 for denying an equal share of property to 2 tribal women on the bottom that Section 2(2) clearly states that no provision of the Act would apply to members of any ST except the Centre, by notification in the official gazette, directs in any other case.
Not in settlement with the bottom raised by the appellants, the male coparceners, to disclaim an equal share to the women, the decide stated, the Hindu Succession Act applies not solely to those that profess Hinduism but additionally to Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and another one who is just not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi, or Jew by faith.
Further, Section 2(1)(c) of the Act states that the appliance of the legislation to “any other person” might be exempted if it might be proved that such an individual, by customized or utilization, was entitled to observe a very totally different process on points associated to succession and never be ruled by the Hindu legal guidelines.
“Thus, the whole reading of Section 2 would cogently reveal that the statute never intended to exclude the tribal women from the application of the Act but contemplated enabling the tribal community to adopt their custom and practice in the absence of any notification by the Central Government,” the decide wrote.
He additionally acknowledged that it was essential for the events looking for exemption from the Hindu Succession Act to show that their customized was not against public coverage and that it was historic, invariable, in addition to steady, in addition to not being expressly forbidden by the legislature and never against morality or public coverage.
“It is to be noted that the backwardness of the tribal population in the State of Tamil Nadu is not prevailing to such an extent so as to form an opinion that the customs of such a tribal community are to be adopted. There is no such custom and practice established in the present case, and therefore, the question of the application of custom and practice in the matter of inheritance would not arise at all,” the decide concluded.
