Thanks to her year-long battle, a 150-year-old law that denied them inheritance rights got repealed.

On December 2, the state government issued a notification repealing a 150-year-old law – part of the Indian Succession Act – which denied Christian women in these two districts neighbouring Bengaluru right to inheritance. In fact, the Act underwent an amendment in 1925, but this regressive section remained.

The topic came up in the Pinto household when her father MF Pinto, a coffee planter in Siddapura near Madikeri, had last year expressed his intent to divide his plantation equally among his four sons and Arlene. The sons apparently pointed to the 1865 Act which denies daughters a share in property.

Arlene Pinto, a resident of Vittal Mallya Road, was shocked that a section denying inheritance rights to Christian women existed even now. Her father, as progressive as they come, did not want Arlene to suffer any injustice because of an archaic law and encouraged her to get the law changed, though he had predicted that it could take nothing less than 20 years to see it through. And when senior Pinto and his wife are holidaying abroad, his soothsaying fortunately turned wrong.

To everyone’s surprise, the logical end came within a year. “My father pushed me to write to the government about this archaic law. Since my family knew (Rajya Sabha MP) Rajeev Chandrashekar, I wrote to him on how this law is unfair to daughters of the community from Kodagu and Mysore regions while all communities have equal property rights,” recalls Arlene.

Following her petition, Rajeev Chandrashekar wrote to DV Sadananda Gowda, soon after the latter had taken charge of law ministry at the Centre in a November 2014 cabinet reshuffle; within two months, Gowda replied, “The matter has been examined and noted that Section 332 of the Indian Succession Act 1865 empowers the Governor General to exempt any race, sect or tribe from the operation of the Act.
The notification exemption the native Christians of Mysore and Kodagu is still in force as it is not expressly repealed. The state government may, by a notification, revoke any such order but it shall not have retrospective effect.”

Forwarding union law minister’s response, Chandrashekar subsequently wrote to the state government. The Karnataka State Law Commission acted on the representation and recommended that the “notifications by virtue of which all native Christians, in the territory of Mysore and in the Province of Coorg, were exempted from the peration of The Indian Succession Act, 1865, be revoked by Government of Karnataka by exercising the power conferred under the Indian Succession Act, 1925.”

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Bangalore> Cover Story / by Kushala S, Bangalore Mirror Bureau / December 25th, 2015