Summary
The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal, under Order XII Rule 6 CPC and without any application by the defendants, of a daughter's suit for partition of her late father's properties, holding that the rule empowers a court on its own motion to dismiss a suit on the plaintiff's admissions, that the plaintiff could not go behind unchallenged consent decrees of 1977 and 1978 recognising her father and brother as owners, and that those decrees reflected a partition before 20 December 2004 so that the proviso to amended Section 6(1) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 excluded her claim.
Issues
- Whether a court may dismiss a suit under Order XII Rule 6 CPC on its own motion, without an application by the defendant, or whether dismissal at the threshold is possible only under Order VII Rule 11 CPC.
- Whether the plaintiff and her sister could go behind declaratory consent decrees passed in earlier suits (1972, 1977, 1978 and 1985) to which they or their father and brother were parties and which they had never challenged.
- Whether the sister who had purchased and later sold part of the Barota land could contend that it was coparcenary property.
- Whether amended Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 applied so as to confer coparcenary rights on the daughters.
- Whether the claim to the Anand Niketan house, held by the brother under a registered perpetual sub-lease of 1970, was barred by limitation and otherwise disclosed a cause of action.
Provisions considered
- Order XII Rule 6, Code of Civil Procedure, 1908Gives the court a very wide discretion to give judgment at any stage, on the application of any party or of its own motion, on admissions made in pleadings or otherwise; following Rajiv Ghosh (2025) and ITDC v. Chander Pal Sood, it authorises the court not only to decree an admitted claim but also to dismiss the suit on the plaintiff's admissions. (¶¶ 36, 37)
- Order VII Rule 11, Code of Civil Procedure, 1908The appellant's contention that the plaint could have been rejected and the suit dismissed only under this rule, and not under Order XII Rule 6, was held untenable in law. (¶¶ 7, 36)
- Section 6(1), proviso (as substituted by the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005), Hindu Succession Act, 1956The proviso saves any disposition or alienation including a partition that took place before 20 December 2004. The consent decrees in Suits II, III and IV, though declaratory, were grounded on a consensus that the properties stood partitioned among the family, and partition need not take any particular form; the proviso was therefore attracted and the daughters' reliance on amended Section 6 (and Vineeta Sharma) failed. (¶¶ 16, 45)
- Section 16, Code of Civil Procedure, 1908Noted from the courts below: a suit for partition of the Barota agricultural land situated at Sonepat, Haryana must be brought before the competent court there; the plaintiff was given liberty accordingly and did not challenge this before the Division Bench. (¶¶ 2, 5, 22)
Held
- The submission that the Single Judge could dismiss the suit only under Order VII Rule 11 CPC, and not under Order XII Rule 6 CPC without an application by the defendants, is untenable. Order XII Rule 6 confers a very wide discretion to pass judgment at any stage of the suit and on the court's own motion, and authorises it not only to decree an admitted claim but also to dismiss a suit on the basis of admissions. (¶¶ 36, 37)
- In Suit I (1972) the plaintiff and her sister themselves pleaded a mutual partition in 1971 under which Barota land was divided and Bhatgaon land fell to their brother absolutely; no HUF created after 1957 was pleaded. By Suit II (decreed 8 March 1977) their father obtained against them alone a declaration that he continued to own the Barota land and that the revenue entries in their names were wrong. On a conjoint reading of the pleadings, prayers and decrees in Suits I and II, the plaintiff and her sister accepted their father as absolute owner of Barota land, the ownership reverted to him, and they stood ousted from his HUF; being within their knowledge, the decrees bind them. (¶¶ 39, 40, 41)
- Suit III (decreed by consent in 1978) declared the brother owner of the Barota land covered by Suits I and II, and the portion remaining with the father was willed to his grandsons. Since the decrees in Suits II and III were never challenged before any competent court despite knowledge, the plaintiff and her sister cannot go behind them in the present proceedings and argue that they are a nullity; an averment in a 2007 suit that a 1977 decree was collusive cannot help them. (¶¶ 42, 43)
- Having of her own volition purchased part of the Barota land from the brother's son in 1992 and sold it to a third party in 2000, the sister (Respondent No. 6) is estopped from contending that the Barota property belongs to a coparcenary or HUF of which she is a member. (¶ 44)
- Although the decrees in Suits II, III and IV were declaratory, they were grounded on a consensus that the properties stood partitioned among the family members, and declaratory decrees of that kind could not have been passed without a partition inter se. Partition need not be effected in any particular format. The decrees therefore recognise a partition before 20 December 2004, attracting the proviso to amended Section 6(1) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, and the arguments based on amended Section 6 do not apply. (¶ 45)
- The Anand Niketan house, purchased by the father in 1968, was transferred to the brother by a registered perpetual sub-lease deed in 1970 which, though known to the plaintiff and her sister, went unchallenged for thirty-seven years; the challenge to its ownership is barred by limitation. As they had admitted in Suit I that Bhatgaon land fell to the brother absolutely, its sale and use of the proceeds to buy and build the Anand Niketan house gave them no cause of action for partition. (¶¶ 46, 47)
- The averments of coparcenary or ancestral property in Suit IV (1984) concerned only the HUF of the brother and his two sons, a branch which can hold property as a distinct unit within the larger family; those averments gave the plaintiff and her sister no right or cause of action. Suit IV proceeded on the footing that the daughters had no right in their father's properties as the partitions of his HUF and the brother's HUF had already taken place, and the house was partitioned in its entirety between the brother and his sons. (¶¶ 48, 49)
Result
Appeal dismissed; dismissal of the partition suit under Order XII Rule 6 CPC, with liberty to approach the competent court at Sonepat for the Barota land, upheld.