Per Shri A. Kalyanasundharam, Accountant Member - These axe several appeals for several years by the assessee involving the same issues and, therefore, they are disposed of by a common order. The issues that have been raised by the assessee are as under :

1. Whether the property, which was belonging to the HUF comprising of the assessee’s husband, the assessee and the mother of the deceased continue to remain a HUF property even after the death of her husband in the absence of any male members ?

2. Whether the adoption of son effected subsequent to the death of the husband takes effect from the date of adoption or from the time of death of the husband of the lady, in which case HUF status continues in respect of the property ?

3. Whether it was proper to hold that on the death of the husband the ladies received the property by succession and thereby the adoption does not have the effect of divesting of the property already vested in the hands of the female members ?

The brief facts of the case are that the property consisting of lands in Dudu Garden at Sansar Chandra Road, Jaipur was received several years back by late Shri Jaswant Singh and had the character of impartibility. After his death Shri Bhanu Pratap Singh, his son, took charge of the property and there was no dispute to the fact that it was an ancestral property. Shri Bhanu Partap Singh died on 21-5-1966 at which time he did not have any son or any daughter but left behind his wife and mother. The assessee adopted one Shri Kuldeepsingh on 2-6-1966. The claim of the assessee was that the adoption was effective from the time when the husband of the lady was alive and, therefore, the character of the property continued to be that of a HUF. This was, however, not accepted by the authorities below, as according to the provisions of section 4(6) of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957 (‘the Act’) read with section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, when the Hindu dies leaving his family property behind with no male members, then the female members receive the property by succession and not by survivorship. Therefore, they concluded on the death of the husband of the assessee, the assessee and her mother-in-law received the properties owned by the HUF in equal proportions in their individual capacities.

2. Before us, the argument of the counsel of the assessee, Mr. N.C. Chadda, was that in accordance with the Patna High Court decision in Savitri Devi v. CIT [1976] 104 ITR 385, HUF exists and continue to exist as there was an adoption of a son by the widow. He also relied on State of Maharashtra v. Narayan Rao Sham Deshmukh [1985] 46 CTR (SC) 349 for this proposition on the applicability of section 6. The Rajasthan High Court in Smt. Dhani Devi and Jhavermal v. CED [1973] 89 ITR 96, CIT v. Maharaja Chintamani Saran Nath Sah Deo [1986] 157 ITR 358 (Pat.), Mahrajadhiraj Himmat Singhji v. CWT [1984] 150 ITR 247 (Kar.)

3. On the other hand, the argument of the learned departmental representative was that section 4(6) provides that a property which has the character of impartibility is to be treated as individual property for wealth-tax assessment purposes and, therefore, it flows out from this particular provision that the property received by the assessee and her mother-in-law on the death of her husband is owned by them in their individual capacity and it would be wrong to say that there exists a HUF in the absence of any male member at the time of death of the only male member.

4. We have given very careful considerations to the arguments of both the parties. The similar issue was under consideration before their Lordships of the Patna High Court in the case of Savitri Devi (supra). The facts of that case are that there existed a bigger HUF and one of the coparceners died on 8-1-1953. On that date, the coparcener’s son was living, who subsequently died on 2-2-1955. There was a partition of the bigger HUF on 14-10-1955, the karta of which was the widow’s father-in-law and during the