But the rule of primogeniture, if it had survived at all after Independence, could not override personal law in the succession of former princely private estates, it directed.
“Of the four immovable properties, three, as stated earlier, are in the joint names of the family members. Therefore, irrespective of the applicability of the rule of primogeniture or the Hindu law, they are liable to division between the joint holders,” it stated, adding that the property at Mussoorie would devolve upon the successors under Hindu law and is divisible among the family members.
With the order, the court brought an end to a succession dispute that has spanned almost five decades.
One of the parties, Brigadier Sukhjit Singh, the government-recognised ‘Maharaja of Kapurthala’, is 92 years old; the other is being represented by the heirs of the original chief litigant, his wife, who did not survive to see the case decided. Many of the lawyers and judges who have addressed the case over the decades have also either passed way or are not handling it anymore. At long last, the case is also put to rest.
ThePrint looks at the case history and court judgments on the division of royal property.
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The royal property question
The matter goes back to 1977, when Singh claimed major assets, including ancestral estates, as his own personal property. His estranged wife, Gita Devi, countered that it was family property; their children joined her suits, arguing that they each had a right to demand share of inheritance under Hindu law.
Singh’s primary argument was that in accordance with the rule of primogeniture applicable to princely states in India, the properties, whether public or private, were inherited by him as his personal properties and he was free to do as he liked with them.
The chief issue goes back to pre-Independence India. It is sometimes overlooked that British India was not a single, coherent whole; it was a patchwork of Britain-ruled territories, with over 500 princely states accepting British suzerainty but otherwise governing their own affairs.
These princely states ensured continuity through three broad features. First, there was little distinction between the property of the state and the personal property of its ruler; for most purposes, they were one and the same. Second, inheritance was by male primogeniture: passed to the first-born son (if there was one). And third, the estate was passed down as a whole, not divided up among the heirs, meaning inheritance was usually not partible.
When India became independent, the princely states were absorbed into the country often through merger agreements.
The rulers of several princely states, including Kapurthala, signed one such agreement. Article XII of this agreement specifically made a distinction between state property, which would similarly merge into India, and private property.
A 1950 White Paper on Indian Princely States quotes the agreement as saying:
(1) The Ruler of each Covenanting State shall be entitled to the full ownership, use and enjoyment of all private properties (as distinct from State properties) belonging to him on the date of his making over the administration of that State to the Raj Pramukh.
(2) He shall furnish to the Raj Pramukh before the 20th day of September, 1948, an inventory of all the immovable properties, securities and cash balances held by him as such private property.
This distinction was cemented by early Supreme Court jurisprudence.
In 1952’s Vishweshwar Rao vs State of Madhya Pradesh, the court made it clear that princely property was now ordinary private property, treated like any other privately-owned parcel of land.
In 1960, the Supreme Court confirmed that ordinary law applied to former princely property in Sri Sudhansu Shekhar Singh Deo vs State Of Orissa, a dispute over whether this property was now subject to state taxes.
The court had not yet specifically addressed the inheritance issue.
This chance came in 1969 when the apex court delivered a landmark ruling in the Dholpur case. It referred to the family of Maharaj Rana Udai Bhan Singh, the last official Ruler of Dholpur State, who had died without a direct male heir and left behind an inheritance dispute between his adopted son and an older member of another branch of the family. Both claimed the title, the privileges that came with it (including the still-extant Privy Purse payments) and the late maharaja’s vast estate.
In its decision, the court upheld the power of the President of India to recognise a specific ruler, as laid out in the Constitution’s Article 366; whoever the President recognised would have claim to the ceremonial privileges of the gaddi (throne), including the Privy Purse.
That said, the court held that the title brought with it no rights at all to the private property of the late maharaja. “The distinction between recognition of Rulership and succession to private properties of the Ruler has to be kept in the forefront… The recognition of Rulership is not an indicia of property,” it said.
The court did not specifically decide the issue of private property, only noting that the petitioner, the late maharaja’s relative, “has not established any such claim in any court of law”. The sentence was revealing: it implied that inheritance disputes over royal property must be adjudicated in a court of law like any other dispute.
But according to what law? The prevailing civil and personal law or the customs of the particular princely state? The court had not answered this question, and would not until relatively recently.
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A judicial split
In 2019’s Talat Fatima Hasan vs Syed Murtaza Ali Khan, the Supreme Court ruled in a dispute over the property of the former Nawab of Rampur. Once again, the argument centred around whether succession should be decided by princely custom or Muslim personal law.
A three-judge bench of SC ruled that the properties would pass in accordance with Muslim personal law.
Relying heavily on the 1969 Dholpur decision (by a five-judge bench), it said: “We have, therefore, no hesitation in holding that on the death of the ruler, Nawab Raza Ali Khan in the year 1966, succession to his private properties was governed by personal laws.”
The ruling seemed definitive—but just months later, it was contradicted by another judgment.
In 2019’s Trijugin Narain vs Sankoo, two branches of a family were at loggerheads over the inheritance of the former Maihar State. One side argued that, as former princely property, the custom of impartible primogeniture should apply, and the estate could not be divided among heirs. The other side argued that Hindu family law should apply.
A two-judge bench of the court ruled that estates like Maihar were exceptions from Hindu family law, and that primogeniture held precedence. It stated that “erstwhile sovereign property now held as private property would devolve vide the merger agreement and the Constitution as per the customs applicable to the erstwhile Rulers”.
There were now two competing decisions: the Maihar case and the Rampur case, which held that the private properties of a former ruler devolved according to personal law. The contradiction left space for ambiguity: did Rampur set out a general principle, or was it narrowly applicable to the specific case, or to Muslim personal law only?
The Kapurthala resolution
Further clarity came with 2022’s Maharani Deepinder Kaur vs Rajkumari Amrit Kaur judgment.
Once again, the parties were divided over the inheritance of the late Maharaja of Faridkot’s estate: should it go to his daughter’s branch of the family, or to that of his closest male relative?
A three-judge bench of the top court firmly rejected the argument that the estate’s impartibility and primogeniture survived the merger of the princely state.
“The impartible estate of Hindu Undivided Family, if any, existed prior to Covenant entered by the Ruler disappeared on account of an Act of the State,” it said.
The judgment seemed to directly contradict the 2019 Maihar decision–but it refrained from doing so explicitly. In fact, the decision did not reference Maihar at all. Therefore, while it seemed definitive, some space for ambiguity still remained.
That space has shrunk significantly with this week’s decision, in which the court decided that Hindu law applied to the Kapurthala inheritance.
The court countered the opposing Maihar decision by noting that, in that decision “the ratio of Talat Fatima Hasan (supra) is not appreciated in all its facets”.
It essentially argued that the Maihar bench had read the Rampur case too narrowly, saying: “This Court in Trijugi Narain (supra) did not consider the central issue that was involved in Talat Fatima Hasan (supra) by simply stating that the said decision was limited to Muslim Personal Law”.
In fact, the court said, the Rampur case had set out a general principle. It stated that the “question is not about the applicability of Personal Law, but rather whether the rule of primogeniture applies, thereby excluding Personal Law”.
In other words, is primogeniture completely removed from the succession of former princely private property?
The bench concluded so, relying heavily on the older Dholpur decision to state that “the right to succession to the gaddi is distinct from the right to succession to private properties, which has to be in accordance with the personal law of succession”.
It further supports its argument with reference to the more recent Faridkot judgment, stating in no uncertain terms that “rule of primogeniture, if any, ceased to exist on account of Act of State”.
The bench found these cases more persuasive than the Maihar decision, ruling that “the decision of the Division Bench in Trijugi Narain (supra) would not prevail over the decision of the three judges in Maharani Deepinder Kaur and that of Talat Fatima Hasan”.
The wording in Wednesday’s order has left little room for ambiguity.
While it has not explicitly overturned the Maihar decision, it has left that judgment extremely isolated, making it clear that the court’s jurisprudence is now tilted towards recognising the primacy of personal law over princely custom.
In doing so, the court completes a doctrinal shift that began with the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union. For decades, courts have gradually disentangled sovereignty, title and property, treating former rulers less as remnants of a separate constitutional order and more as ordinary citizens subject to ordinary law.
By holding that succession to private property follows personal law rather than princely custom, the court has reaffirmed that merger agreements preserved the dignity of the gaddi, but not the legal privileges of sovereignty.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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