A lady member of a Hindu undivided family made a sworn declaration throwing her own money and her share in a business into the family stock, and the family has been offering the income ever since. The Assessing Officer says the income is still hers. Who is right?
On these facts the Assessing Officer. The Supreme Court held that the true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners: it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and the right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener — and it makes no difference whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income was therefore not assessable in the hands of the family on the footing of blending. The Court nevertheless allowed the appeal in part on the second question: the declaration was held to amount to a gift by the appellant to the undivided family, and the income of the property so gifted was directed to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law.
Decided by the Supreme Court (Y.V. Chandrachud J and P.S. Kailasam J (judgment delivered by Chandrachud J)) on 1977-08-30, reported as Civil Appeal No. 1738 of 1971; equivalent citations printed on the source page include 1977 AIR 2230, 1978 SCR (1) 329, 1977 4 SCC 184 and 109 ITR 730. It bears on section 2(31), section 261, section Gift-tax Act 1958 s.26(1), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(2), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(3) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Gifts, Shares & Angel Tax, Assessment & Scrutiny and How Tax Law Is Read matters.
Two things make this decision worth carrying, and one thing about it has to be handled with care. First, the reasoning is not a sex-based rule but a status-based one, and the Court explained why the two are different: to blend is to share along with others, not to surrender one's interest in favour of others to the exclusion of oneself, and a non-coparcener who purports to blend creates new claimants to her property to the exclusion of herself, because she cannot demand a share by asking for a partition, has no right of survivorship, and is entitled only to be maintained out of the joint family property. The Court concluded that the expression "blending" is inapposite in such a case. Second, the alternative characterisation matters as much as the holding: where the purported blending fails, what has actually happened may be a gift to the family, and the tax consequences follow that characterisation instead. THE CARE THAT IS NEEDED: this judgment was decided in 1977 and the Court's premise that "A Hindu female therefore is not a coparcener" was the law as it then stood. Since the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 a DAUGHTER is a coparcener in her own right by birth — see Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma. The status-based ratio of Pushpa Devi survives that change unaltered; what changes is which women fall on which side of it. The appellant in Pushpa Devi was a wife and daughter-in-law of the family into which she purported to blend, not a daughter of a coparcener of it, and the 2005 amendment does not make a wife or a daughter-in-law a coparcener.
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Pushpa Devi was a member of a joint Hindu family consisting of herself, her husband, her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, her minor son and three daughters. On 19 June 1958 she entered, in her individual capacity and with the aid of her personal assets, into a partnership with her father-in-law Gur Narain Khanna in the name of Gur Narain Jagat Narain & Co.; her minor son Ravi Narain Khanna was admitted to the benefits of the partnership. The firm owned two cinema houses, Nishat Talkies at Kanpur and Novelty Talkies at Lucknow, for which separate accounts were kept. On 31 August 1961 a sum of Rs. 67,284.57 stood to her credit in the books of Nishat Talkies. On 1 September 1961 she made a sworn declaration that she was the sole and absolute owner of those amounts and of her share in that business and declared unequivocally her intention to treat both her capital and her share in the business as the joint family property of the Hindu undivided family of which she was a member, abandoning for ever her separate interest in the capital investment and in her share of profits and losses. For the assessment year 1963-64 (previous year ended 31 August 1962) a sum of Rs. 20,865, being one-third of the income of Nishat Talkies, was credited to the joint family's account and the family paid advance tax on it and returned it; she omitted it from her own return with a note explaining the declaration. The Income-tax Officer rejected her contention on the ground that the karta should have become a partner in consequence of the investment. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner affirmed on two grounds — that she was not a coparcener and so could not impress her personal property with the character of joint family property, and that the family had no joint family property into which she could throw it. The Tribunal accepted her contention. On a reference the Delhi High Court answered in favour of the Revenue on the coparcener ground while rejecting the Revenue's second ground, and granted a certificate under s.261. A three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court, by judgment of 24 September 1976, directed the Tribunal to send a supplementary statement on whether there was a gift of her capital investment and share in favour of the Hindu undivided family, and by order of 31 January 1977 the Tribunal found that there was a gift and that the family had accepted it.
The appeal failed on the first question and succeeded on the second, and was allowed in part with no order as to costs. The true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners; it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and that right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener, whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income from Nishat Talkies was accordingly not assessable in the hands of the Hindu undivided family on the basis that the appellant had blended it with joint family property. On the second question the Tribunal's finding that the appellant must be deemed to have made a gift of the items mentioned in her declaration to the undivided family was confirmed, and the income of the property so gifted was held liable to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law. The Court also held that the High Court was not quite correct in stating without qualification that the question was res integra.
The Court held the question to be covered by its own earlier decision in Mallesappa Bandappa Desai v. Desai Mallappa, and analysed that decision at length to show that although Channamma there held the property as a limited owner, the ultimate decision did not rest on the limited estate but on the fact that she was not a coparcener: the "basic notion of blending" which that judgment highlighted is that the coparcener alone can blend, and the right is not available to a female who is a member of the joint family but not a coparcener. Lakkireddi Chinna Venkata Reddi, Rajani Kanta Pal and the Delhi High Court's decision in Munshi Lal were held not to deal with the question at all — in Munshi Lal the capacity to blend had simply been assumed, the referred question being whether the act amounted to a gift, which the High Court answered in the negative following Goli Eswariah. Shiba Prasad Singh, on the incorporation of self-acquired property with an impartible estate, was held not to the point, the analogy being misconceived because the true rule of blending is limited to coparceners. The Court then took a fresh look at the doctrine: blending involves a wider sharing of one's own property by admitting the members of one's joint family to common ownership and enjoyment, but one does not by blending efface oneself by renouncing one's own interest in favour of others; a non-coparcener female who impresses her absolute exclusive property with the character of joint family property creates new claimants to the exclusion of herself, since she cannot demand a share by asking for a partition, has no right of survivorship, is entitled only to be maintained out of the joint family property, and her right to demand a share is contingent on a partition between her husband and his sons, her right to demand partition having accrued under s.3(2) and (3) of the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act, 1937 on the death of her husband. The expression "blending" is therefore inapposite in her case. Finally the Court noted that a Hindu coparcenary is a much narrower body than the joint family, including only those who acquire an interest by birth — the three generations next to the holder in unbroken male descent — so that a Hindu female is not a coparcener, and that even the right to reunite is limited to males; it therefore does not militate against the fundamental notions governing a Hindu joint family that a female member cannot blend her separate property even if she is its absolute owner.
To blend is to share along with others and not to surrender one's interest in favour of others to the exclusion of oneself.
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Handle my notice → Ask a CA on WhatsAppOn these facts the Assessing Officer. The Supreme Court held that the true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners: it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and the right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener — and it makes no difference whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income was therefore not assessable in the hands of the family on the footing of blending. The Court nevertheless allowed the appeal in part on the second question: the declaration was held to amount to a gift by the appellant to the undivided family, and the income of the property so gifted was directed to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law. This was decided by the Supreme Court (Y.V. Chandrachud J and P.S. Kailasam J (judgment delivered by Chandrachud J)) and bears on section 2(31), section 261, section Gift-tax Act 1958 s.26(1), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(2), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(3) of the Income Tax Act 1961. It is reported as Civil Appeal No. 1738 of 1971; equivalent citations printed on the source page include 1977 AIR 2230, 1978 SCR (1) 329, 1977 4 SCC 184 and 109 ITR 730. Two things make this decision worth carrying, and one thing about it has to be handled with care. First, the reasoning is not a sex-based rule but a status-based one, and the Court explained why the two are different: to blend is to share along with others, not to surrender one's interest in favour of others to the exclusion of oneself, and a non-coparcener who purports to blend creates new claimants to her property to the exclusion of herself, because she cannot demand a share by asking for a partition, has no right of survivorship, and is entitled only to be maintained out of the joint family property. The Court concluded that the expression "blending" is inapposite in such a case. Second, the alternative characterisation matters as much as the holding: where the purported blending fails, what has actually happened may be a gift to the family, and the tax consequences follow that characterisation instead. THE CARE THAT IS NEEDED: this judgment was decided in 1977 and the Court's premise that "A Hindu female therefore is not a coparcener" was the law as it then stood. Since the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 a DAUGHTER is a coparcener in her own right by birth — see Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma. The status-based ratio of Pushpa Devi survives that change unaltered; what changes is which women fall on which side of it. The appellant in Pushpa Devi was a wife and daughter-in-law of the family into which she purported to blend, not a daughter of a coparcener of it, and the 2005 amendment does not make a wife or a daughter-in-law a coparcener. If it applies to you, the first step is this: Ask the status question first: was the person purporting to blend a coparcener of THAT family at the date of the declaration? If not, the blending fails on this authority.
Pushpa Devi was a member of a joint Hindu family consisting of herself, her husband, her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, her minor son and three daughters. On 19 June 1958 she entered, in her individual capacity and with the aid of her personal assets, into a partnership with her father-in-law Gur Narain Khanna in the name of Gur Narain Jagat Narain & Co.; her minor son Ravi Narain Khanna was admitted to the benefits of the partnership. The firm owned two cinema houses, Nishat Talkies at Kanpur and Novelty Talkies at Lucknow, for which separate accounts were kept. On 31 August 1961 a sum of Rs. 67,284.57 stood to her credit in the books of Nishat Talkies. On 1 September 1961 she made a sworn declaration that she was the sole and absolute owner of those amounts and of her share in that business and declared unequivocally her intention to treat both her capital and her share in the business as the joint family property of the Hindu undivided family of which she was a member, abandoning for ever her separate interest in the capital investment and in her share of profits and losses. For the assessment year 1963-64 (previous year ended 31 August 1962) a sum of Rs. 20,865, being one-third of the income of Nishat Talkies, was credited to the joint family's account and the family paid advance tax on it and returned it; she omitted it from her own return with a note explaining the declaration. The Income-tax Officer rejected her contention on the ground that the karta should have become a partner in consequence of the investment. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner affirmed on two grounds — that she was not a coparcener and so could not impress her personal property with the character of joint family property, and that the family had no joint family property into which she could throw it. The Tribunal accepted her contention. On a reference the Delhi High Court answered in favour of the Revenue on the coparcener ground while rejecting the Revenue's second ground, and granted a certificate under s.261. A three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court, by judgment of 24 September 1976, directed the Tribunal to send a supplementary statement on whether there was a gift of her capital investment and share in favour of the Hindu undivided family, and by order of 31 January 1977 the Tribunal found that there was a gift and that the family had accepted it. The matter was decided on 1977-08-30 by the Supreme Court (Y.V. Chandrachud J and P.S. Kailasam J (judgment delivered by Chandrachud J)). On those facts the Supreme Court held as follows. The appeal failed on the first question and succeeded on the second, and was allowed in part with no order as to costs. The true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners; it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and that right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener, whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income from Nishat Talkies was accordingly not assessable in the hands of the Hindu undivided family on the basis that the appellant had blended it with joint family property. On the second question the Tribunal's finding that the appellant must be deemed to have made a gift of the items mentioned in her declaration to the undivided family was confirmed, and the income of the property so gifted was held liable to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law. The Court also held that the High Court was not quite correct in stating without qualification that the question was res integra.
The Court held the question to be covered by its own earlier decision in Mallesappa Bandappa Desai v. Desai Mallappa, and analysed that decision at length to show that although Channamma there held the property as a limited owner, the ultimate decision did not rest on the limited estate but on the fact that she was not a coparcener: the "basic notion of blending" which that judgment highlighted is that the coparcener alone can blend, and the right is not available to a female who is a member of the joint family but not a coparcener. Lakkireddi Chinna Venkata Reddi, Rajani Kanta Pal and the Delhi High Court's decision in Munshi Lal were held not to deal with the question at all — in Munshi Lal the capacity to blend had simply been assumed, the referred question being whether the act amounted to a gift, which the High Court answered in the negative following Goli Eswariah. Shiba Prasad Singh, on the incorporation of self-acquired property with an impartible estate, was held not to the point, the analogy being misconceived because the true rule of blending is limited to coparceners. The Court then took a fresh look at the doctrine: blending involves a wider sharing of one's own property by admitting the members of one's joint family to common ownership and enjoyment, but one does not by blending efface oneself by renouncing one's own interest in favour of others; a non-coparcener female who impresses her absolute exclusive property with the character of joint family property creates new claimants to the exclusion of herself, since she cannot demand a share by asking for a partition, has no right of survivorship, is entitled only to be maintained out of the joint family property, and her right to demand a share is contingent on a partition between her husband and his sons, her right to demand partition having accrued under s.3(2) and (3) of the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act, 1937 on the death of her husband. The expression "blending" is therefore inapposite in her case. Finally the Court noted that a Hindu coparcenary is a much narrower body than the joint family, including only those who acquire an interest by birth — the three generations next to the holder in unbroken male descent — so that a Hindu female is not a coparcener, and that even the right to reunite is limited to males; it therefore does not militate against the fundamental notions governing a Hindu joint family that a female member cannot blend her separate property even if she is its absolute owner. In the words reproduced by the source cited on this page: "To blend is to share along with others and not to surrender one's interest in favour of others to the exclusion of oneself." The decision followed or applied Mallesappa Bandappa Desai & Ors. v. Desai Mallappa & Ors., 1961 (3) SCR 779 — applied; Lakkireddi Chinna Venkata Reddi v. Lakkireddy Lakshmamma (1964) 2 SCR 172; Rajani Kanta Pal & Ors. v. Joga Mohan Pal 50 IA 173; and Commissioner of Gift-tax, Delhi v. Munshi Lal 85 ITR 129 — held not applicable; Goli Eswariah v. Commissioner of Gift-tax, 76 ITR 675 — referred to; Shiba Prasad Singh v. Rani Prayag Kumari Debi 59 IA 331 — distinguished.
It was decided by the Supreme Court on 1977-08-30 and is reported as Civil Appeal No. 1738 of 1971; equivalent citations printed on the source page include 1977 AIR 2230, 1978 SCR (1) 329, 1977 4 SCC 184 and 109 ITR 730. Binding on every court and authority in India. A Supreme Court decision binds every assessing officer, every Commissioner (Appeals), every bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and every High Court in India. An officer who declines to follow it is acting contrary to law, and that refusal is itself a ground of appeal. On section 2(31), section 261, section Gift-tax Act 1958 s.26(1), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(2), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(3), the practical question is whether the facts of your own notice match the facts of this case closely enough for the same rule to apply.
It helps the department, and it appears in this library for that reason — you need to know what the Assessing Officer will cite against you. The appeal failed on the first question and succeeded on the second, and was allowed in part with no order as to costs. The true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners; it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and that right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener, whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income from Nishat Talkies was accordingly not assessable in the hands of the Hindu undivided family on the basis that the appellant had blended it with joint family property. On the second question the Tribunal's finding that the appellant must be deemed to have made a gift of the items mentioned in her declaration to the undivided family was confirmed, and the income of the property so gifted was held liable to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law. The Court also held that the High Court was not quite correct in stating without qualification that the question was res integra. It arises in Gifts, Shares & Angel Tax, Assessment & Scrutiny and How Tax Law Is Read matters, on section 2(31), section 261, section Gift-tax Act 1958 s.26(1), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(2), section Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act 1937 s.3(3) of the Income Tax Act 1961, and was decided by Y.V. Chandrachud J and P.S. Kailasam J (judgment delivered by Chandrachud J). Before relying on it, read the source linked on this page and check whether it has since been distinguished, overruled or overtaken by an amendment to the Income Tax Act. In practice the steps that follow from it are these. For a declaration made on or after 9 September 2005 by a DAUGHTER of a coparcener, do not apply Pushpa Devi's conclusion without more; she is a coparcener by birth under the substituted section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 as held in Vineeta Sharma. For a wife or a daughter-in-law, the position is unchanged by the 2005 amendment; she is a member of the joint family but not a coparcener of it. Where blending fails, do not stop there. Consider whether the declaration operated as a gift to the family, as the Court held on the second question, and work through the consequences of that characterisation instead. Do not read the decision as turning on whether the family owned any joint family property. That contention was rejected by the High Court below and the Supreme Court did not disturb its rejection.
Still good law. Whether a daughter, now a coparcener, may blend her separate property has not been decided by any court found on this check: the Madras High Court in Kettimuthu Gounder v Muthammal (20 March 2020), the most recent decision applying this judgment, restated the rule that a Hindu female is not a coparcener and cannot throw her property into the hotchpotch without drawing any exception for daughters, so the point should be treated as open. No source could be cited for that finding. Checking whether an authority still stands matters as much as knowing what it held: a decision may be overruled on one point and survive on another, or the provision it interprets may have been amended since. Read the source and the editor's note on this page before relying on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal.
The plain /doc/1530226/ URL returned HTTP 403 on this pass; the judgment was read in full — header, ACT and HEADNOTE blocks, counsel, the whole of Chandrachud J's judgment and the disposal "Appeal allowed in part" — through the print rendering, and the central passage was then read a second time at https://indiankanoon.org/docfragment/1530226/. The judgment carries NO paragraph numbers in either rendering, so no paragraph locator is given; I established the absence of numbering by having the whole document transcribed in one piece. THE HEADNOTE PRINTED ON THE SOURCE PAGE IS THE LAW REPORTER'S EDITORIAL WRITING, NOT THE COURT'S, and nothing has been quoted from it; note in particular that the headnote records the declared share of losses as "1/3rd" while the body of the judgment records it as "one-half", and that the headnote gives the income figure as Rs. 20,865 in the narrative and Rs. 21,544 in the conclusion, as does the body — the smaller figure being the share of income for the year and the larger being the figure in the question referred. I have reproduced both without reconciling them because the judgment does not reconcile them. The statement in 'why_it_matters' about the effect of the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 is drawn from Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma, read separately on this pass, and is NOT a holding of this judgment, which predates that amendment by twenty-eight years. This library shows the verification state of every entry openly. This entry has not yet been read in full by a chartered accountant. The summary reflects the sources listed on this page. Read the source before you rely on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) or the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.
The appeal failed on the first question and succeeded on the second, and was allowed in part with no order as to costs. The true rule of blending is that the right to blend is limited to coparceners; it is the coparcener who alone can blend his separate property with joint family property, and that right is not available to a female who, though a member of the joint family, is not a coparcener, whether the separate property is her absolute property or one in which she has a limited estate. The income from Nishat Talkies was accordingly not assessable in the hands of the Hindu undivided family on the basis that the appellant had blended it with joint family property. On the second question the Tribunal's finding that the appellant must be deemed to have made a gift of the items mentioned in her declaration to the undivided family was confirmed, and the income of the property so gifted was held liable to be brought to tax consistently with that finding and in accordance with law. The Court also held that the High Court was not quite correct in stating without qualification that the question was res integra.
TaxSphere, “Pushpa Devi v. CIT — the right to blend is limited to coparceners, so a Hindu female who is not a coparcener cannot throw her separate property into the family stock”, https://taxnotice.vittsphere.com/caselaw/case/pushpa-devi-v-cit-only-a-coparcener-can-blend-separate-property-with-joint-family-property/ (validity last checked 2026-09-09)
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