INTRODUCTION
India is a multi-religious society; the applicability of Personal Law is entirely dependent on individual religious affinities. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis, and Jews each have their own sets of personal laws, such as Hindu law, Muslim law, Christian law, Parsi law, and Jewish law. Personal law is the body of law that governs an individual in a variety of areas, including rules relating to marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption, inheritance, guardianship, succession, and so on. All of this is connected to a marriage's validity, the repercussions of marriage on proprietary and property rights. Husband and wife's rights, marital nullity or divorce, illegitimacy, and legitimation and adoption, testamentary-when a will is made, and intestate-where a person dies without leaving a will and property rights succession. In this article, I will be talking about property rights within Hindu personal laws.
RIGHT TO PROPERTY
The Right to Property has been a basic right in India since the 1950s when the country's constitution was enacted. Two articles, Article 31 and Article 19(1)(f), basically ensure that any person's right against his property is preserved. These two articles were deleted by the Constitutional 44th Amendment Act of 1978, and a new Chapter IV in Part XII was added, comprising only one Article 300A. A new article titled Right to Property was incorporated into the Indian Constitution by the 44th Amendment Act of 1978. This article places constraints on the state, stating that it cannot seize anyone's property without the force of law, which can also be read to mean that the state can be stripped of its legal authority. The Supreme Court has ruled in Vidhya Devi v. The State of Himachal Pradesh & Or’s. that the freedom to possess private property is a fundamental human right that cannot be denied.
HINDU SUCCESSION LAW
Succession refers to the process of transferring property from one person to another after the former's death. After independence, all Hindus are subject to the same secular succession laws. The ancient Hindu law as well as the customary law of succession is revoked. Males have received preferential treatment over females. With the formulation of the Hindu Succession Act 1956, this problem has been much reduced. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 revised the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, by amending sections 4, 6, 23, 24, and 30. It changed the regulations on coparcenary property, giving daughters of the deceased identical rights and exposing them to the same obligations and restrictions as sons. Through legislation, the amendment fundamentally promotes equal rights for Hindu males and females in society.
• Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, which deals with the coparcener's right in Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) property, was changed on September 9, 2005, with effect from that date. In terms of coparcenary rights in HUF property, girls are now on par with sons as a result of this modification. As a result, the daughter inherits all of the rights that come with coparcenary, including the power to request property partition and become a Karta of the HUF.
• Only the daughters born into the family will be granted coparcenary powers. Other female family members who enter the household through marriage are still treated as outsiders. As a result, they do not have the right to request partition, but they do have the right to maintenance and shares if and when a partition occurs.
• A daughter will no longer be a member of her parents' HUF after marriage, although she will remain a coparcener. As a result, if she is the eldest coparcener of her father's HUF, she has the right to request partition of the HUF property and to become the Karta of the HUF.
• The daughter cannot give up her portion of the HUF property while she is alive, but she is perfectly capable of doing so through her will. If she dies without leaving a will, her portion of the joint property will transfer to her legal heirs rather than the other partners of the HUF. Daughters, like sons, have the right to request the partition and sale of their hereditary properties.
• The Supreme Court recent judgement on February 25, 2021, ruled that family members on a Hindu widow's parental side cannot be considered "strangers," and that her property might pass to them under the Hindu Succession Act. The Supreme Court clarified that the heirs of a Hindu woman's father are encompassed by the definition of "persons entitled to the inheritance of property."
CONCLUSION
Many initiatives have been taken to reduce inequalities, but there are still many more to be taken. It is possible to improve the status of women by developing a fair system for it, educating women about their rights, providing base-level helping mechanisms to aid poor and needy women in obtaining their rights, enforcing laws quickly and correctly, and boosting awareness among women. The urgent necessity of the hour is for gender-neutral or equal inheritance rules.
REFERENCES
3.https://lawtimesjournal.in/succession-rights-of-women/