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Section 85: No part rejected, if it can be reasonably construed

Indian Succession Act • Official Statutory Text & Practice Guide

Statutory Regulation
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Competent Court / Tribunal
Act 1925
Section 84 All 391 Sections of Indian Succession Act Section 86

Legal Commentary & Landmark Judgments: Section 85

Section 85 directs that no part of a will shall be rejected as redundant or meaningless if it is possible to put a reasonable construction upon it.

  • Core Legal Standard: Section 85 codifies the rule against treating any testamentary text as surplusage.
  • Operational Mechanism: Every single word, phrase, sentence, and clause written by the testator was presumably intended to serve a purpose.

Therefore, no part of a will is to be discarded, rejected, or declared meaningless if it is capable of being reasonably construed in harmony with the overall document.

Judicial interpreters are forbidden from ignoring inconvenient words or arbitrarily striking out clauses simply because they present an interpretive challenge. Only when a clause is completely unintelligible, hopelessly contradictory, or utterly impossible to reconcile after exhausting all canons of construction may a court consider discarding it.

Key Landmark Precedents:
  • Balwant Kaur v. Chanan Singh, (2000) 6 SCC 310: The Supreme Court held that under Section 85, every clause in a will must be given meaning and operation; courts cannot strike down or ignore any provision if a harmonious construction can save it.
  • Pearey Lal v. Rameshwar Das, AIR 1963 SC 1703: The Supreme Court emphasized that the interpreter must assign legal meaning to every expression in the testament, respecting the testator's deliberate inclusion of the text.
Legal Commentary:

Section 85 prevents opposing parties from selectively excising unfavorable conditions or restrictions. When an opponent argues that a restrictive clause should be ignored as 'mere surplusage' or 'loose language', counsel should invoke Section 85 to force the court to assign reasonable operational meaning to that text.

Section 84 All 391 Sections of Indian Succession Act Section 86