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1. The two petitioners in this writ petition dated April 15th, 2004 are aggrieved by the decision of Land Manager and Ex-officio Assistant Secretary to the Government of West Bengal, Urban Development Department dated May 26th/28th, 2003, which is:

I am directed to refer to your letter dated 29-1-2003 on the subject noted above and to inform you that the Deptt. regrets its inability to consider your prayer for mutation of the subject plot of land since the stepsons are not to be treated as legal heirs for the purpose of inheritance to the property of Step-mother.

3. In 1972 Jyoti married the petitioners' widowed father, Durgapada, who died on January 8th, 1991. Widowed Jyoti died issueless and intestate on July 25th, 2002. On her death the petitioners, her stepsons, claiming to be her heirs, applied to the appropriate authority of the government for mutating the records showing them as the lessees of the property. By the impugned decision their application was turned down on the ground that as stepsons they were not to be treated as Jyoti's heirs entitling them to inherit her property.

4. In my view, counsel for the petitioners is absolutely right in saying that in view of the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, Section 15(1)(b), the petitioners were entitled to seek mutation of the records as only heirs of Jyoti's predeceased husband. Counsel for the State has referred me to Lachman Singh v. Kirpa Singh and Ors. holding that the word 'sons' used in Section 15(1)(a) does not include a stepson of a female Hindu dying intestate. That is not the case here. Here the petitioners are Jyoti's stepsons, and Jyoti died issueless and intestate.

5. Counsel for the State has further said that by a representation dated December 24th, 1991 Jyoti expressed her last desire to the government that on her death her stepsons should not get the property. He, however, does not go to the extent of saying that the representation is to be treated as a will, which it was not, as rightly said by counsel for the petitioners; and hence it has no effect in the eye of law. The provisions in Section 15(1), admittedly Sub-section (2) of Section 15 does not apply to the present case, are absolutely clear that in the absence of persons mentioned in Clause (a) thereof, and that is exactly the case here, the property of a female Hindu dying intestate shall devolve upon the heirs of her husband, i.e., upon the persons mentioned in Clause (b).