NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a contentious issue — why provisions of the secular Indian Succession Act (ISA) do not apply to a non-believer Muslim who wants to divide his property equitably among his children by discarding Muslim Personal (Shariat) Application Act’s succession provision that privileges sons.
As a Muslim woman narrated the pitiable state she and her father, both non-believers in Islam, found themselves in regarding the division of property, a bench of CJI D Y Chandrachud changed tack from “we can’t give a declaration that a non-believer Muslim would be governed by ISA” and said the petition had raised an important issue for adjudication by the SC.
“How can a secular law not apply to Muslims?” the bench asked and posted the matter for further hearing in the second week of July. The bench issued notice to the Union govt and requested attorney general R Venkataramani to depute a law officer to assist the court.
Tough for even a non-believer Muslim to come under ISA
The woman said she had a brother who was afflicted with Down Syndrome and she and her father, a widower, took care of him. She said as per Shariat, daughter gets just half the share of what sons are entitled to as successors of their father, which in this case meant the son would receive two-thirds of her father’s property and she would get one-third.
Her counsel Prashant Padmanabhan argued that if “something happened to the son”, then his share would not go to her or her daughter, but to some relative of her father. “There is no authority where my father can go and say that he is a non-believer Muslim and that he would like to give effect to an equitable succession through the secular ISA,” he said.
After reading Section 3 of the Shariat law, the bench said if the father does not make a declaration that he is a Muslim, he could escape the rigours of Muslim personal law. But the CJI-led bench then looked at Section 58 of the ISA, which provides that “testamentary succession (wills) to the property of any Muhammadan” will not be covered by this legislation.
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