JUDGMENT
Narayan, J.
1. This is a plaintiff’s second appeal arising out of a suit in which the plaintiffs sought to recover possession of half share in certain lands described in Schedules I and II of the plaint on declaration of his title thereto. The property in suit belonged to one Molan Singh who died leaving a widow Mt. Manmati Kuer. Manmati Kuer came into possession of the property as a limited owner, but as she alleged that she had two daughters, Rudar Singh the father of the plaintiff-appellant, and Jhulan Singh and Janardan Singh, defendants 1 and 2 respectively of this suit, had to institute a suit for a declaration that Mt. Urehan KUER and Alodhan Kuer who had been set up by Mt. Manmati Kuer as her daughters were really not her daughters. This suit was Title Suit No. 60 of 1929 and while it was pending Rudar Singh died and the present appellant was substituted in his place. A deed of ekrarnama was executed on 20th December 1930 by the plaintiff Baikunth Singh and defendants 1 and 2 and one of the terms of this ekrarnama was that in the event of the suit succeeding the plaintiff would be entitled to the same share in the property in dispute to which his father Rudar Singh would have been entitled. This suit ended in a decree in favour of the plaintiffs, and after the termination of that suit defendants 1 and 2 obtained from Mt. Manmatia deed of surrender with regard to the property which was the subject-matter of the suit and after the surrender they settled some lands out of the said property with Damodar Singh, defendant 4 by a deed of settlement. The execution of the deed of surrender and the settlement with defendant 4 have been mentioned in the plaint as the cause of action for the present suit which was commenced on 27th June 1942. The plaintiff has prayed for a declaration that the deed of surrender in favour of defendants 1 and 9 and the patta, executed by them in favour of defendant 4 are fraudulent and inoperative documents and that by virtue of the ekrarnama which had been executed on 20th December 1930 the plaintiff is entitled to half share in the property which was the subject matter of Title suit No. 60 of 1929 and which is also the subject-matter of this present suit. Mt. Manmati died daring the pendency of this suit, and after her death the plaintiff amended the plaint and added a prayer for recovery of khas possession of one-half share in the disputed land.
2. The principal defendants, namely, defendants 1 and 2, contested the plaintiff’s claim and their main defence was that by virtue of the agreement embodied in the ekrarnama dated 20th December 1930 no title to the property in suit had passed to the plaintiff, inasmuch as the agreement is hit by Section 6 (a), T. P. Act, which forbids the transfer of expectancies or a mere spes successionis.
3. The contention of the defendants has found favour with the Courts below and the suit has accordingly been dismissed.
4. The only point for determination in this appeal, therefore, is whether the agreement embodied in the deed of ekrarnama dated 20th December 1930 is illegal and void. Of course, one of the contentions raised by the defendants was that the deed of ekrarnama was fraudulent, collusive and inoperative, but this contention has not been accepted by the Court below. The only ground on which the learned Court below has dismissed the plaintiff’s suit is that in view of the provisions of Section 6 (a), T. P. Act, the agreement that the plaintiff would be entitled to the share which would have gone to his father Rudar Singh is illegal and unenforceable. As has already been pointed out, the previous suit namely, Title Suit No. 60 of 1929, had been instituted by Rudar Singh, the father of this appellant, and by defendants 1 and a and the cause of action for that suit was that Mt. Manmati had set up two ladies as her daughters. Rudar Singh and defendants 1 and 2 were certainly the presumptive reversioners to the estate of Molan Singb, but Rudar Singh having died during the pendency of the suit, his son could not claim to be a presumptive reversioner, though he was substituted in place of his father and though he might have contributed towards the expenses of the litigation. It, however, appears from the ekrarnama that defendants 1 and 2 agreed to relinquish that share in the property in favour of this plaintiff which Rudar Singh would have been entitled to as a reversioner. The following clauses in the deed of ekrarnama are important and contain the stipulation on the basis of which the plaintiff is claiming one-half share in the property in suit :
“6. Whatever amount of decree and profits will be awarded by the judgment of the Court or the compromise in the said suit, will be taken by us according to the extent of our respective share and right.
7. After the death of the said Babu Rudar Singh if we, the Executants NOS. 2 and 3, would be deemed to have got any interest according to law, shashtras and fact in place of the said Babu Budar Singh according to the extent of his right, and share in the property left by the said Babu Molan Singh, we, the executants gave up and relinquished that share of Babu Rudar Singh deceased, and the absolute title of executant 3 is declared and confirmed in place of Babu Rudar Singh deceased.”
5. The contention on behalf of the defendants-respondents is that the stipulation contained in para, 7 amounts to an agreement to transfer a mere right to succeed to the estate or a mere spes succession is and so comes within the mischief of Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. But Mr. B. C. De on behalf of the plaintiff-appellant has strenuously urged the contention that this was merely a family arrangement and that because it was a family arrangement, it is not hit by the provision contained in Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. In my opinion, the contention put forward by Mr. De is without any substance. A family arrangement cannot certainly be deemed to be a transfer of property because by such an arrangement no right, either vested or contingent is conveyed by one party to another. As was pointed out by the Allahabad High Court in Raghubir Datt v. Narain Datt, A.I.R. (17) 1930 ALL. 498 : (126 I. C. 24), a decision which has been cited by Mr. De, a family arrangement is founded “on the assumption that there was an antecedent title of some kind in the parties and the agreement acknowledges and defines what that title was.” This language has been borrowed from the decision of the Judicial Committee in Rani Mewa Kunwar v. Rani Hulas Kunwar, 1 I. a. 157: (13 Beng L. R. 312). It was further pointed out in the Allahabad case that the entire scheme of family arrangement rests not upon the transfer of a right but upon the recognition of a claim. In the said Allahabad case the compromise which was the subject-matter of consideration did not intend to make any transfer and did not at all “imply any definite change of legal relation to any property in prasenti or in future.” What their Lordships held in this case was that where a reversioner for good consideration agrees not to lay claim to a property when the succession opens out, he must in equity be held bound by that agreement. Their Lordships relied on a decision of the Judicial Committee in Kanhai Lal v. Brij Lal, 40 ALL, 487; (A.I.R. (5) 1918 P. C. 70) in which case as observed by their Lordships of the Judicial Committee there was no question of a conveyance of or of an agreement to convey, any future right or expectancy, or of an agreement to relinquish any future right or expectancy. About the claim of Lala Kanhai Lal who had claimed as a reversioner and who was confronted by a compromise which he had entered into, their Lordships had to observe as follows :
“Lala Kanhai Lal’s case was that, according to an Agarwal custom (the family was of the Agarwal caste) which governed the family, a man could lawfully adopt his sister’s son, and he alleged that Badri Prasad had given Mt. Parbati authority to make the adoption, and that he, Lala Kanhai Lal had been validly adopted to Badri Prasad. That Lala Kanhai Lal might have found it difficult or impossible to prove that ha had been validly adopted is immaterial. He made the claim; it was a serious one, and it was supported by Mt. Parbati and it must have influenced Mt. Ram Dei, who was induced, doubtless mainly by that claim, to consen to a division of the family property, in which she obtained for herself merely a one-fourth share. The claims which were set up by Mt. Parbati and Mt. Kausilla, that the three sons of Balak Ram had separated, must also have influenced Mt. Ram Dei to agree to the compromise of 1892, Lala Kanahi Lal was a party to that compromise. He was one of those whose claims to the family property, or to shares in it, induced Mt. Ram Dei, against her own interests and those of her daughter, Mt. Kirpa, and greatly to her own detriment, to alter her position by agreeing to the compromise, and under that compromise he obtained a substantial benefit, which he has hitherto enjoyed. In their Lordships’ opinion he is bound by it, and cannot now claim as a reversioner.”
These facts make that case entirely distinguishable from this present case, and their Lordships distinctly pointed out that in that case there was no question of an agreement to relinquish any future right or expectancy. These two authorities can, therefore, be of little use to the appellant in this case. The other two decisions relied on by the learned counsel are the decisions of this Court in Jagdam Sahay v. Rupnarain Mahton, 5 P. L T. 375: (A.i.r. (11) 1924 Pat. 736) and in Rai Kumar Singh v. Abhai Kumar Singh, A.i.r. (35) 1948 Pat. 362. In the former case Jwala Prasad J. with whom Foster J. agreed did not construe the agreement in question as a transfer of any reversionary right or relinquishment of their chance of succession. As was pointed out by Jwala Prasad J. the plaintiffs who were the reversioners did not transfer any interest but simply agreed not to raise any objection to the transaction and for so doing they obtained good consideration in the shape of properties having been given to them which under no circumstance they would have got at that time. It is, therefore, that their Lordships thought that the arrangement was a family arrangement which had been confirmed and consented to by the reversioners. The arrangement was of the nature of a takshimnama (partition) on account of a dispute having arisen between the nephews, the daughter and the daughter’s sons of one Girwar Narain. There was an amicable division of the properties between them and a share was taken by each of the aforesaid three parties. Each cosharer took possession of the properties allotted to him or her and dealt with it on that footing, but on the death of the daughter the two grandsons born of a predeceased daughter brought suits for possession in respect of the properties which had been allotted to the surviving daughter and to the two nephews. On these facts their Lordships found that the partition was in the nature of a bona fide settlement of the family dispute and was binding on all the parties including the two grandsons by the predeceased daughter. In the second case a certain compromise was the subject of consideration and it was found that that compromise was not hit by any rule of Hindu law or by the provisions of Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. The compromise was arrived at in a partition suit, and by virtue of the compromise the shares of all the parties had been defined and they had taken immediate possession of the properties. There was an agreement that they would not claim any share which would otherwise have accrued to them on the death of either of the parties. As pointed out by Manohar Lall J. the agreement in question had been entered into in bona fide settlement of several disputes that had cropped up between the members of the family. In my opinion, none of these two Patna cases can be cited as authority in this case in support of the proposition that the agreement in question should be regarded as a family arrangement. Mr. De seems to have, overlooked para. 3 of the ekrarnama wherein it is distinctly stated that the executants 1 and 2 who are defendants 1 and 2 respectively in this present suit were members of one family and Rudar Singh the father of executant 3 who is the plaintiff in the present suit, and executant 3 were the members of another family and that the family of these defendants had no concern whatsoever with the family of this plaintiff. In face of this clear statement in the deed of eknarnana on the basis of which the plaintiff seeks to recover half share in the property in suit it would be idle to contend that the arrangement embodied in the ekrarnama should be regarded as a family arrangement.
6. Mr. De also put forward the plea of estoppel and contended that because defendants 1 and 2 had agreed to relinquish one-half share in the property in favour of the plaintiff and because on that understanding the plaintiff had met half the expenses of the litigation they were now estopped from contending that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover half share. But the principle of estoppel cannot be invoked by the plaintiff in this case if under the law the agreement in question is one which comes within the mischief of Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. On the authority of certain Privy Council decisions, I have no doubt that the agreement in question offends against the provision contained in Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. Their Lordships of the Judicial Committee have held in Amrit Narayan v. Gaya Singh, 45 I. A. 35 : (A. I. R. (4) 1917 P. C. 95) that a Hindu reversioner has no right or interest in prasenti in the property which the famale owner holds for her life and that until it vests in him on her death, should he survive her, he has nothing to assign or to relinquish, or even to transmit to his heirs. His right as painted out by their Lordships, becomes concrete only on her demise; and until then it remains spes successionis. In Harnath Kuar v. Indar Bahadur Singh, 50 I. A. 69 : (A. I. R. (9) 1922 P. C. 403), a Hindu had obtained a declaration that he was entitled to succeed to certain estates on the death of the last surviving widow of one Naipal Singh to whom the estates had belonged. The plaintiff’s case was that the said Hindu had transferred half the estate to the plaintiff’s husband and the question was whether on the date of the sale the said Hindu possessed an interest in the property which was capable of being transferred. Their Lordships held that there was no effectual transfer of the property because on the date of the transfer the vendor had only an expectancy. In Ananda Mohan v. Gour Mohan, 50 I. A. 239 : (A. I. R. (10) 1923 P. C. 189) there was a contract by a Hindu to sell immovable property of which he was the nearest reversionary heir entitled to succeed to it upon the death of the widow in possession. He had entered into an agreement to transfer the property after possession had accrued to him, and this agreement was held to be void according to the provisions of Section 6 (a), T. P. Act. The agreement with which we are concerned in this appeal does not stand on any better footing, and it must be regarded as an agreement for transfer of property which could have come in the hands of the reversioners only after the death of the widow Mt. Manmati Kuer who was alive on the date of this agreement. Nobody could anticipate at that time as to what would be the position of this plaintiff and these defendants 1 and 2 at the time when the lady would die and whether any of them would be alive at the time of the lady’s death. The subject matter of this agreement was certainly a mere expectancy and Section 6 (a), T. P. Act, which forbids the transfer of expectancies would be rendered nugatory if a contract of this nature is enforced. The question of estoppel does not to my mind arise at all, because it was quite within the knowledge of this plaintiff at the time when he entered into this agreement that he was not the presumptive reversioner. At that time only defendants 1 and 2 were in the position of presumptive reversioners and the fact that the plaintiff had been substituted in place of Rudar Singh who had died during the pendency of the litigation did not clothe him with the right which was possessed by Rudar Singh. The plaintiff must be deemed to be aware of the provisions contamed in Section 6 (a), T. P. Act, and he could not enter into any such agreement which if enforced would offend against that provision of law. It cannot be said that the defendants by their declarations, acts or omission intentionally caused or permitted the plaintiff to believe a thing to be true and to act upon such belief. The legal position was perfectly clear and understandable, and apart from the principle that ignorance of law is no excuse, the agreement which has been entered into shows that the plaintiff very well realised that he was not even in the position of a presumptive reversioner at the time when the ekrarnama was executed. It is an agreement dealing with a mere spes successions and therefore unenforceable. The decision of a Division Bench of this Court in Joti Lal v. Beni Madho, A. I. R. (24) 1937 Pat. 280: (168 I. C. 512) is a decision on this point and it is decisive of this case and decisive of it against the appellant.
7. In the result, this appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.
Das, J.
8. I entirely agree.