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Showing contexts for: owelty in Col. Vinod K. Mayne (Retd.) vs Brig. Deepak K. Myne And Ors. on 1 March, 2007Matching Fragments
7. He also relied upon another judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Badri Narain Prasad Chaudhary and Ors. v. Nil Ratan Sarkar to contend that the suit property was so small and it could not be conveniently partitioned without destroying its intrinsic worth and thus, he should be permitted to stay in the property and all other co-owners should be paid compensation. The Court in that case held as under:
The suit property, being incapable of division in specie, there is no alternative but to resort to the process called owelty, according to which, the rights and interests of the parties in the property will be separated, only by allowing one of them to retain the whole of the suit property on payment of just compensation to the other. As rightly pointed out by K. Subba Rao, C.J. (speaking for a Division Bench of Andhra High Court in AIR 1958 Andh Pra 647), in cases not covered by Sections 2 and 3 of the Partition Act, the power of the Court to partition property by any equitable method is not affected by the said Act.
19. In the case of Badri Narain Prasad (Supra), the Supreme Court had ennunciated equitable principle of Just Compensation, which is to be paid in lieu of the share of other co-owners of the property where the property was incapable of being division in specie. The Court permitted the process of owelty to be adopted. The ancillary issue before such a principle could be applied to, is what is the just compensation? Just compensation normally should be the market value of the property, which is divided into prescribed shares or at least an amount, which is quite close to such an amount. None of the ingredients of the aforesaid judgment are satisfied in the present case inasmuch as the property has been partitioned and by such partition majority of the shareholders are satisfied. Secondly, the appellant has never offered what is the just compensation payable according to him. Just because he is in possession of portion of the property in excess of his share, he cannot be permitted to continue to enjoy such benefit without discharging his obligation towards the other co-owners. There is no justification or reasonable ground made out by the appellant, which could justify interference by us with the impugned judgment.