Survivorship under Hindu law cannot be extended to partitioned property for estate duty treatment.

Section 8(1)(d) of the Hindu Law Women's Rights Act, 1933 was construed as applying only where joint family property passes to a coparcener by survivorship on death, not where a share is allotted on partition. The High Court treated survivorship and partition as distinct modes of devolution under Hindu law and held that the statutory protection could not be extended beyond that language, even though the provision was beneficial in nature. As the property had been allotted to the deceased at partition and not acquired by survivorship, the claim that the unmarried daughter and wife had an interest in the deceased's share for estate duty purposes failed.

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Issues: Whether section 8(1)(d) of the Hindu Law Women's Rights Act, 1933 applied to property allotted to a coparcener on partition so as to treat the unmarried daughter and wife as having an interest in the deceased's share for estate duty purposes.

Analysis: The relevant statutory expression was "passes to a single coparcener by survivorship". The expression was construed in its settled Hindu law sense as referring to devolution by survivorship on the death of a coparcener, and not to allotment of a share on partition. A partition and survivorship were treated as legally distinct modes of devolution. Since the property in question had been allotted to the deceased at a partition and had not passed to him by survivorship, the statutory protection did not extend to the claim made by the accountable person. The beneficial character of the provision did not justify rewriting its language or departing from established principles of Hindu law.

Conclusion: Section 8(1)(d) did not assist the assessee, and the claim that the unmarried daughter had an interest in the deceased's property was rightly rejected.

Ratio Decidendi: A provision conferring rights where joint family property passes by survivorship cannot be extended to property allotted on partition, because survivorship and partition are distinct legal concepts.

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