Tenants-in-common assessment status upheld where consistent succession treatment required rectification of an inconsistent individual assessment.

The Kerala HC held that rectification was justified where an estate had been consistently assessed in earlier and later years as belonging to the legal heirs as tenants-in-common under the Indian Succession Act, 1925. A solitary assessment year could not be treated differently as an individual status without proper legal basis, especially when the record supported the settled position reflected in the concluded assessments for other years. The court found the refusal to correct the assessment unsustainable and directed the assessment to conform to the tenants-in-common status of the legal heirs.

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Issues: Whether the petitioner was entitled to rectification of the assessment order by recognition of the legal heirs as tenants-in-common and by correction of the status wrongly assigned as individual for the assessment year in question.

Analysis: The assessment record showed that for the earlier and later assessment years the estate had been consistently treated as held by the legal heirs as tenants-in-common. The governing law of intestate succession was the Indian Succession Act, 1925, and the material on record did not justify a departure from the settled position merely for the solitary assessment year in dispute. The rejection of rectification on the ground that the issue had already been considered did not accord with the consistent treatment reflected in the concluded assessment orders for the other years. The court found that the legal position and the factual matrix did not support treating the petitioner as an individual for the year in question.

Conclusion: The petitioner was entitled to rectification, and the refusal to correct the assessment was unsustainable.

Final Conclusion: The petition was allowed and the assessment was directed to conform to the settled tenancy-in-common status of the legal heirs.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the same estate has been consistently assessed in the status of tenants-in-common for other years and the governing succession law supports that status, a solitary inconsistent assessment cannot be sustained by refusing rectification without proper legal justification.

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