Second Rejection Plea Barred After Final Order

The Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s order rejecting a partition plaint at the threshold and restored the suit to file. The Court held that a second application under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, filed on substantially the same grounds as an earlier application that had already been dismissed and had attained finality, was barred by res judicata.

The dispute arose from the estate of a Hindu male who died intestate in 1985. His daughters filed a suit in 2007 seeking partition and allotment of a share in the family properties. The defendants relied on an alleged oral partition, a family partition document of 1988, and a registered partition deed of 2000 to contend that the daughters had no enforceable claim. The plaint, however, treated the 2000 deed as the operative partition and alleged that the daughters were excluded.

An earlier Order VII Rule 11(d) application had already been decided against the defendants. In 2013, the High Court held that even if the daughters did not get a coparcenary share, the suit could still be maintained because the father had died intestate and the daughters could claim in his share as Class I heirs under Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act. That order was not challenged further.

Years later, the legal representatives of one defendant filed a fresh Order VII Rule 11 application, this time relying on a supposed change in law after Vineeta Sharma. The Supreme Court rejected that approach. It held that the earlier order had finally decided the maintainability issue, and the same question could not be reopened through a second rejection application.

On the statutory issue, the Court clarified that Section 6(5) of the Hindu Succession Act is not a jurisdictional bar to the filing of a partition suit. It operates as a saving clause. The Court also affirmed that where the father died intestate, daughters have a right in his share as Class I heirs under Section 8, independent of the 2005 Amendment.

The Court therefore restored the trial court’s order dismissing the rejection application, directed that the plaint remain on file, and asked the trial to proceed expeditiously.

Practical takeaway: a final order on Order VII Rule 11 cannot be reopened on the same grounds, and Section 6(5) does not by itself defeat a partition suit.