Effect of conduct estopping her from recovering possession.

This is an unfortunate litigation, which, like a snow-ball, gathered volume and momentum, as it progressed during the last eighteen years. In essence, it started originally as a suit for recovery of a half share of the properties left by one Govindammal. The suit has now been permitted to be converted into one for recovery of possession of the entire properties by reason of certain subsequent events, which we shall refer to presently.

One Govinda Reddi, who was the owner of the suit properties, made a gift thereof in favour of his permanently kept concubine Govindammal. She bore him as many as sixteen children. But at the time of her death, in the year 1938, only two daughters, Meenammal and Kamakshi, and three sons, and a grandson by a predeceased son, the former of whom figures as defendants 1 to 3 to the suit, survived her. The sons got into possession of the properties. They alienated a part of item 1 and the whole of item 2 in favour of defendant 4, who put up thereon a cinema theatre. Meenammal instituted the suit, which has given rise to this appeal, on 1st October, 1945 for recovery of her half share in her mother’s properties from defendants 1 to 3, her brothers, and their alienees. Kamakshi was impleaded as the sixth defendant to the action, and she claimed that she should be given her half share in that very suit, she being willing to pay the necessary court-fee for such a decree Whether the relief could be given to her, having regard to the decisions in Adhikarai Vishnumurthiayya v. Authaiya and others1, and Korappolu Veerabhadrayya v. Jajala Seethamma2, it is unnecessary to consider as the litigation up till now has proceeded on the footing that it could be done. The trial Court, in the first instance, by its judgment dated 27th December, 1946, granted a partial decree to the two sisters, holding that under the terms of the gift deed made by Govinda Reddi, each one of the surviving children and grand son would be entitled to an equal share. Kamashi was declared entitled to recover possession of her share on her paying the necessary court-fee. Meenammal and Kamakshi were, however, dissatisfied with the decree granted to them. They filed jointly A. S. No. 529 of 1947 in this Court claiming that each will be entitled to a half share in the properties to the exclusion of their brothers. It appears that, pending appeal, they were able to obtain possession of a half share in each of items 11 to 14. By this judgment dated 24th January, 1951, Viswanatha Sastri, J., who disposed of the appeal, held that the sisters were preferential heirs to the properties left by their mother, as the gift made by Govinda Reddi was to his concubine absolutely, and not for the benefit of the children. The learned Judge directed the lower Court to pass a decree granting to each one of the sisters a half share in the suit properties. The alienees-defendants 4 and 5-filed L.P.A. No. 49 of 1951, under clause 15 of the Letters Patent against the judgment of Viswanatha Sastri, J. During the pendency of that appeal Kamakshi died on 13th May, 1954, leaving as her heirs her three daughters who were subsequently impleaded as defendants 28 to 30 in the suit (respondents 19 to 21). The alienees applied to this Court in C.M.P. No. 7288 of 1954 to bring them on record in the place of their deceased mother, whose right to a half share in the suit properties had been declared under the judgment appealed against. Notice of that application was given to Meenammal through her advocate. She did not object to her sister’s daughters being brought on record as legal representatives, although under the law she (Meenammal) would be preferentially entitled to the half share in the mother’s properties to which her sister, Kamakshi, had been declared entitled; for, under the law as it existed prior to the enactment of the Hindu Succession Act (XXX of 1956), the stridhana property of a female would, in the first instance, go to her daughters equa