India, March 7 -- Wajib-ul-Urj, a customary law among tribals which fosters inequality in the close-knit community, is still followed religiously in Himachal Pradesh's remote mountainous districts. This is despite the Supreme Court clarifying on several occasions that daughters will be treated on par with sons and will be granted equal coparcenary rights in their father's property.

The deep-rooted statutory provision Wajib-ul-Urj has been in existence for almost a century and does not recognise the amended Hindu Succession Act of 1956, which grants equal rights to men and women to inherit ancestral property.

The result is that women, unmarried, widows and even divorcees don't have the right to inherit the property of their father or h...