The main legal point established in the judgment is that a reversioner may lose his rights if he positively and definitively chooses to announce his intention and agrees to abide by the act of the widow, affirming the applicability of the doctrine of ratification.

Coutts-Trotter, C.J.

1. The facts necessary for the determination of this reference are briefly these.

2. Vemulapalli Subbayya died in 1909, leaving a widow Seethamma, defendant 1 and his mother Bapamma, defendant 3 surviving him. On 2nd October 1918, Seethamma executed a deed of gift in respect of some of the properties that came to her from her husband in favour of her own brother Veeraraghavayya who is imp-leaded as defendant 2 in this case The gift was effected by means of a document which is filed as Ex. 1 in the case, and on 19th October the plaintiff executed a document filed as Ex. 2 which in effect is a complete relinquishment of all of his rights as prospective reversioner and also purports to give full consent to the transaction evidenced by Ex. 1 to which document indeed he was an attesting witness. The question is whether by reason of his action in these matters he is to be held to be precluded from challenging the transaction. The exact wording of the question is as follows:

Where an alienation without necessity (Ex. 1) by a Hindu widow of property forming part of her deceased husbands estate is consented to by the next presumptive male reversioner who, however, receives no consideration for giving such consent, is the transaction binding on the consenting reversioner, if he succeeds to the estate after the death of the widow and of the female reversioner succeeding her.

3. There is a Full Bench decision of the Allahabad Court, Fateh Singh v. Rukmini Ramanji Maharaj A.I.R. 1923 All. 387, which is directly in favour of the respondent here and that in its turn was followed by a Full Bench of the Bombay Court, Akkava v. Sayadkhan Mitherkhan A.I.R. 1927 Bom. 260. In substance the argument before us is that these cases are inconsistent with the Privy Council decision in the Goundans case, Rangasami Goundan v. Nachiappa Goundan A.I.R. 1918 P.C. 196.

4. The learned Judge who decided the second appeal, Ramesam, J. speaks in his judgment of the plaintiff, the prospective reversioner being estopped. In our opinion no question of estoppel arises in this case at all, for the essence of the doctrine of estoppel is that a person who acts on a representation of fact made to him by another person and is thereby damnified, is entitled to say that the person who made that representation) cannot be heard to contest the truth of the facts which he himself asserted. The essence of the doctrine is that the person who acted on the faith of the assertion was damnified by so acting, and that feature is altogether absent in this case. The next ground on which it is suggested that the plaintiff may be put out of Court is on the doctrine of election. That well known equitable doctrine is stated in the leading case of Streatfield v. Streatfield decided in 1735 and most conveniently reported in 1 White and Tudor 440, and I cannot summarize it better than in the words of the learned editors in their notes to that case which begin at the bottom of p. 444. They say this Election is the obligation imposed upon a party by Courts of equity to choose between two inconsistent or alternative rights or claims in cases where there is a clear intention of the person from whom he derives one that he should not enjoy both. Every case of election, therefore, pre-supposes a plurality of gifts or rights, with an intention, express or implied, of the party who has a right to control one or both that one should be a substitute for the other. The party who is to take-has a choice, but he cannot enjoy the benefit of both.

5. The same principle is often put in another form that a person cannot approbate and reprobate the same transaction. In this case that doctrine can have no application for the simple reason that no benefit was taken by this plaintiff of any kind, and that his approbation was a mere expression of intention which had no further consequences. But there is a third doctrine of equity, an obviously indispensable one which has received various legal