The Karta: Position, Powers, Privileges and Obligations

In one line

The senior-most coparcener manages the family property, and the law gives him powers no ordinary agent has because it also holds him to duties no ordinary agent owes.

Position

Who is karta

The senior-most coparcener is karta. The office goes by seniority, not by election, and not by competence.

Three rules follow.

He holds by right, not by appointment. He does not need the consent of the other coparceners, and they cannot remove him for incompetence.

A junior coparcener may be karta by agreement. Where the senior coparcener gives up the position, expressly or by conduct, or is absent, or is incapable, the others may agree that a junior act as karta.

A minor cannot be karta, though a minor is a coparcener, because he cannot manage. Where all the coparceners are minors, the mother or guardian may manage the property as a de facto guardian, and that is a different office with much narrower powers, taken in [The Powers of a Natural Guardian, and the De Facto Guardian].

Can a woman be karta

This is the examinable question and it has two cases and one distinction.

Commissioner of Income-tax v. Seth Govindram Sugar Mills Ltd, AIR 1966 SC 24, decided on 26 March 1965.

Facts. A joint Hindu family of two branches owned a sugar mill. After partition the two kartas entered into a partnership in 1943 to run it, each representing his own family, the deed providing that a partner's death should not dissolve the firm and that his heir or nominee should take his place. One karta died in 1945 leaving three widows and two minor sons. The other carried on the business, and the firm sought registration as a partnership.

Held. A joint Hindu family as such cannot be a partner of a firm, but it may through its karta enter into a partnership with the karta of another family. And, decisively for this chapter, a widow, though a member of a joint family, cannot become its manager. Two High Court decisions to the contrary were overruled. It followed that the partnership ended when one of the two kartas died.

Why it matters here. It is the authority every textbook cites for the proposition that a woman cannot be karta. Note exactly what it decides: it is about a widow, who is a member of the joint family and has never been a coparcener.

Manu Gupta v. Sujata Sharma, RFA(OS) 13/2016, Delhi High Court, decided on 4 December 2023.

Facts. The last karta of the D. R. Gupta and Sons Hindu undivided family died in February 2006. Sujata Sharma, a daughter of a deceased son of the founder, claimed to be the next Karta as the eldest coparcener, relying on the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005. Most members did not object. Manu Gupta and three others did, arguing that kartaship owes its provenance to Hindu custom, that the 2005 amendment was meant only to equalise the division of property and not to confer the office, that the office remains confined to the senior-most male coparcener, and that a daughter might at most be recognised as a manager.