Monday, January 29, 2007

SC notice on married girls’ share

The Supreme Court today issued show cause notices to government authorities, including the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Cabinet, and wanted to know why married daughters should not be given share of parental property.

A single bench of Justice Kalyan Shrestha issued show cause notices following today’s hearing. The bench gave 15 days’ time to the PMO, the Ministry of Law Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare and the Secretariat of the Legislature-Parliament to send their answers to the SC.

The bench also issued show cause notices to the same authorities and wanted to know why equal property rights should not be given to married and unmarried daughters in the case of termination of genealogy. The bench has put both the issues on priority list.

The bench was responding to separate Public Interest Litigations filed by advocates Sapana Pradhan Malla and Meera Dhungana challenging the Section 1(a) of the Parental Property Chapter of the amended Civil Code 1963 and Section 2 regarding termination of genealogy.

According to Section 1(a) of the Parental Property Chapter, married daughters are prevented from having a share of parental property and married daughters are not given priority to claim share of the property under Section (2) in case of termination of genealogy.

The advocates have challenged that parental property should be shared even by married daughters and called for an apex court order to provide share of property to married daughters by scrapping the current provisions.

According to Section 2 regarding termination of Genealogy, the property goes to husband, wife, son, unmarried daughter, grandson, and married daughter, in that order. The advocates claimed that it is discrimination between married and unmarried daughters.

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