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All these writ petitions are listed before this Court consequent to a direction issued by the Hon'ble Full Bench on 17.06.2022.

2. Mr. Justice M. Dhandapani vide order dated 19.01.2022 in W.P.NO.25247 of 2021 (batch) had referred the following questions to be referred to the Hon'ble Division Bench:

“ 1. When Sections 8 and 15 of the Hindu Succession Act speak in clear terms about the persons, who are the legal heirs of a deceased person and Sections 9 to 11 provide the manner in which Class II heirs would succeed to the property of a deceased person, inspite of the specific provision under the Act, could the issue be relegated to the Tahsildar for identifying the class II legal heirs for the purpose of issuing legal heirship certificate?
3. In the absence of any challenge to Letter No. 1534, dated 28.11.1991 and (3)/80/2017 dated 9.8.2017, which prohibit the Tahsildar from issuing Class II Legal heirship certificates in case of certain disputed circumstances, which has formed the basis for rejection of the application for Class II Legal Heirship Certificate, would it be right on the part of this Court to given an affirmative direction under Article 226 of the Constitution to issue Class II Legal heirship certificate, sidelining the mandated procedure laid down under the Succession Act for obtaining such a certificate.”
“A. Legal heirship is a status governed by the respective personal law of parties through various statutes.The certificates issued by the Tahsildar amount to nothing more than a relationship certificate reflecting the opinion of the Tahsildar as to the relationship of the applicant and others named https://www.mhc.tn.gov.in/judis W.P.No.25247 of 2021 etc therein with the deceased. Consequently, the certificate issued by the Tahsildar does not affect the legal right of any party and has no bearing on the status of a legal heir which is conferred on an individual under his/her personal law.
C. Consequently, a writ of mandamus under Article 226 of the Constitution will not lie to direct the Tahsildar to issue a legal heirship certificate contrary to the terms of a circular. An exception to the aforesaid principle is where the circular, ex-facie, suffers from the vice of arbitrariness or perversity or runs counter to any provision of law. In such cases, it is open to the Court to ignore the circular and grant such relief(s) as may be permissible in law.