The main legal point established in the judgment is the impact of the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and S.43 of the Transfer of Property Act on the partition of tarwad properties and the applicability of estoppel in such cases.

1. These two appeals are connected and arise out of a suit instituted in 1976 as O.S. No. 186 of 1979 of the Sub Court, Trivandrum, a suit for partition of tarwad properties and extinguishment of mortgage rights over items 1 to 3 created under mortgages outstanding from the Tarwad.

2. Defendants 1 to 6 are the appellants in A. S. No. 262 of 1979. Defendants 9 to 25, 30 to 37 and 47 to 53 were initially the appellants in A.S. No. 286 of 1979. At about the time of final hearing, counsel who was appearing for them relinquished the vakalat. A new counsel has appeared for some of them, defendants 26, 29, 31, 32, 47, 50, 52 and 53 on the basis of the vakalat executed by them; and he also appeared in person as power of attorney holder of defendants 48 and 49. We shall first deal with the substantial and main appeal, A.S. No. 262 of 1979.

3. The plaint schedule properties items 1 to 16-originally belonged to a marumakkathayam tarwad known by the name Kanikkudivilakam tarwad. A short time before the suit, the tarwad had 33 members, including Mathevi Chinna, who died in 1973. At the time of the suit, there were 32 members in the tarwad, defendants 8 to 39.

4. Innumerable transactions originated in relation to the properties of the tarwad. It is unnecessary for resolving the central controversy in the litigation to refer to the details of all those transactions. As noted earlier, the prayer for extinguishment of the mortgage which was the substantial issue with which the contending parties were concerned related to items 1, 2 and 3. It is therefore desirable that those transactions are briefly referred to, as concerning item 1 on the one hand and items 2 and 3 on the other (Of the various transactions, some centre round item 1 and some others on items 2 and 3 together. A sub-classification of the plaint items into item 1 on the one part and items 2 and 3 on the other part would therefore be convenient.)

5. As regards item 1, transactions started fairly early, transactions which are not actually evident by the documents themselves but about which there are references in the later documents. We thus find initially that there was a mortgage of item 1 from the tarwad, and that the mortgage right had been assigned in favour of Kochan Krishnan; that there was a puisne mortgage to Ayyana Govindan with an authorisation to redeem the earlier mortgage. Ayyana Govindan's rights were assigned to Kochan Krishnan under Ext. A4 dated 13-2-1095. The tarwad granted purakadaras on 2-9-1122 in favour of the legal heirs of Kochan Krishnan, some of the members executing Ext. A5 and some others Ext. A6. Some years later, Ext.A7 melotti and Kuzhikanam was executed in favour of Bhaskara Pillai on 23-8-1955. This was followed by Ext. A9 dated 25-8-1955 executed by Mathevi Chinna and another in favour of Bhaskara Pillai, authorising Bhaskara Pillai to redeem the mortgage and purakadams subsisting on the property. Armed with those rights and authorisation Bhaskara Pillai instituted O.S.No 721 of 1958 for redemption. The legal heirs of Kochan Krishnan, namely Krishnan Velayudhan and Kochuparvathi Chellamma were the defendants in the suit. The suit was ultimately decreed and the appeal therefrom dismissed During the pendency of the suit, Ext. A8 was executed on 12-11-1959 by Krishnan Sekharan in favour of Bhaskara Pillai. The defendants in the suit, O.S No. 721 of 1958 assigned their rights to the 7th defendant under Ext. A10 dated 27-12-1962. Later, on 15-1-1963 Bhaskara Pillai assigned his rights in favour of the 7th defendant. The 7th defendant and her husband 6th defendant executed a gift deed Ext. A12 dated 15-6-1974 in favour of their children, defendants 1 to 5. It would thus be seen that the various mortgage rights ultimately converged and vested in defendants 1 to 5.

6. The equity of redemption was still with the tarwad. Two of the members of the tarwad, defendants 8 and his mother Mathevi Chinna sold their shares in the equity of redemption to one N