The compound, Ca 3 CoRhO 6 (K 4 CdCl 6 -type rhombohedral structure) containing magnetic chains of Co–Rh running along c-axis arranged in a triangular fashion in the basal plane has been known to exhibit a ‘partially disordered antiferromagnetic structure (PDA)’ in the range 40–90K with a spin-glass phase below 40K. Here we report the influence of partial replacement of Ca by Y (that is, without disrupting magnetic chain) on its magnetization behavior by investigating the solid solution, Ca 3− x Y x CoRhO 6 . We find that the solid solution forms up to x=0.5 among the compositions studied and that the feature in the magnetization data attributable to spin-chain magnetism and PDA structure get depressed dramatically for a very small substitution of Ca by Y (x=0.15), however, with the persistence of only low-temperature spin-glass phase.