Land records online in India: what you can check, and what it proves

A land record is the revenue department's entry showing who is recorded as holder of a survey number, how big it is, how the land is classified and what rights or loans are noted against it. Almost every state publishes these online free of charge. The record is evidence of revenue entries and possession. It is not proof of title.

What is a land record?

Indian land administration grew out of revenue collection, not out of title registration. The state's interest in a piece of land was the tax it yielded, so the register was built to answer one question: who do we collect from? That history still shapes what you see on screen. The record tells you who the revenue department believes is in possession and liable, what the parcel is classified as, and what claims have been reported to the village officer. It was never designed to guarantee ownership, and in most states it still does not.

A typical record of rights has four kinds of information in it. First, identification: a survey number or khasra number, often with a sub-division, plus the village, taluk or tehsil and district. Second, extent and classification: the area in local units, whether the land is dry or irrigated, whether it is classified as agricultural, government poramboke or assessed waste. Third, the holders: names, shares and the nature of their interest, whether as owner, occupant, tenant or protected tenant. Fourth, the attached notes: mutation entry numbers that explain how the current name got there, charges such as bank loans reported to the village officer, and in some states crop and cultivation history.

That fourth part is the one buyers under-use. The mutation entry number is the thread that traces how the current name arrived, and a loan noted against the land is a live warning that someone else has an interest in it.

Which portal for which state?

The table below lists the main public portals and the records they serve. We have deliberately not written out menu paths: state portals are redesigned often, URLs move, and a click-by-click walkthrough is the first thing on a page like this to go stale and mislead. Search for the portal by name, confirm you are on a gov.in or nic.in domain, and work from there.

RoR, 7/12, khata, patta, jamabandi: how they differ

These words sound like alternatives to each other when they are mostly regional names for the same idea, with two genuine outliers mixed in. The outliers are where the money is lost.

The record of rights is the generic thing: the revenue register entry for a parcel. Maharashtra and Gujarat call their version the 7/12 extract, because it combines Village Form VII, which carries the rights, with Village Form XII, which carries cultivation detail. Karnataka's RTC or pahani is the same instrument under a different name. In the north the record is the jamabandi, periodically attested and reissued, with the khatauni as the cultivator's holding statement and the khasra as the plot number. In the east it is the khatian against a plot or dag number. In Tamil Nadu it is the patta.

The first real outlier is khata in Karnataka, which is not a revenue record of rights at all. It is the municipal or panchayat property account identifying who is liable for property tax, and in Bengaluru the A-khata or B-khata distinction decides whether a property can be financed easily. People reach for Bhoomi expecting a khata and find an RTC instead, which is a different record about a different thing. We deal with that in patta, khata and the encumbrance certificate.

The second outlier is the encumbrance certificate, which is not a land record either. It is a statement from the sub-registrar's office listing registered transactions against a property over a period you specify. The revenue record tells you who is recorded as holder; the encumbrance certificate tells you what has been registered. Neither substitutes for the other.

What do you need to search with?

Every portal narrows down the same way: an administrative path first, then a parcel identifier. The path is district, then taluk, tehsil, taluka or block, then village, mouza or hobli depending on the state. Get that wrong and you will search an empty set or, worse, a real survey number in the wrong village.

Then you need one of three keys. A survey or khasra number identifies the parcel on the cadastral map and is the most reliable key, especially with its subdivision or hissa number. A khata, khewat or patta number identifies a holder's account rather than a parcel, and shows everything that person holds in the village. An owner name is accepted by many portals but is the weakest key, given widespread name repetition and inconsistent transliteration; confirm any name result against the survey number.

Ask the seller for the survey number and subdivision in writing before you search. If they cannot produce it, or the number does not match the extent they claim, that is useful information on its own.

How do you read a 7/12 extract?

The 7/12 is the record most buyers meet first, and it carries more in one page than most state formats. Read it in blocks.

At the top sit the village, taluka and district and the survey or gat number with its subdivision. Check this against the deed before you read anything else. Below that comes the extent, usually in hectares and ares with the assessment, and the land classification and tenure, which is where restricted tenures show up. A tenure that restricts transfer is a deal-stopper that clean paperwork elsewhere does not fix, so read this line slowly.

The occupants' column lists the recorded holders. More than one name is normal, but it does mean more than one person must sign. The other rights column is where tenancies, easements and charges appear. A bank's mortgage typically shows up here once it has been reported to the village officer, as do tenancy rights under state tenancy law, which can be hard to dislodge.

The extract also carries mutation entry numbers against the names. Each corresponds to a register entry explaining how that name arrived, and pulling them is how you reconstruct recent history from the revenue side. The Village Form XII part adds crop and cultivation detail, which matters on agricultural land.

Maharashtra also issues an 8A extract, which is holder-centric rather than parcel-centric: it shows everything a khata holder holds in that village, which is useful for cross-checking a seller's claims.

How do you read a jamabandi?

The northern jamabandi is organised around holdings rather than single plots. The khewat number identifies the ownership holding, the group of plots held by the same owners in the same shares. The khatauni number identifies the cultivating holding within that. The khasra number identifies the individual field.

So one khewat can contain several khatauni entries, and each khatauni several khasra numbers. Shares are written as fractions against each owner, and those fractions decide who must sign. A buyer taking one khasra number out of a larger khewat must be sure the seller's share covers the field being sold, and that the holding has been partitioned or all co-sharers are party to the sale.

The jamabandi is not continuously rewritten. It is attested and reissued periodically, with changes in between recorded as mutations, so the jamabandi on screen can be several years behind a transaction that has been registered and even mutated. Read it together with the mutation status, never on its own. A fard is a copy issued from the jamabandi; a fard badar is a correction entry, and frequent corrections against a holding are worth asking about.

What did digitisation fix, and what did it not?

The central programme, which began as the National Land Records Modernisation Programme and later ran as the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme, set out to do three things: computerise the textual record of rights, digitise and resurvey the cadastral maps, and computerise the registration offices so the two sides talk to each other.

The first largely worked. In most states you can now pull a readable record of rights without visiting an office, which removed a layer of petty gatekeeping. The third partly worked: registration is computerised almost everywhere, and in several states a registration now triggers a mutation request rather than waiting for the buyer to apply.

The second is furthest from done, and it is the part that matters most for disputes. Textual records were digitised from the existing registers, so errors in the register were digitised too. Spelling variants, wrong extents, names of people long dead, stale tenancy entries and subdivisions that were never recorded all survived the move to a database. Cadastral maps in large parts of the country still rest on very old surveys, and resurvey is incomplete in many districts. Where the map and the ground disagree, the digital record inherits the disagreement.

What digitisation did not do is convert India to guaranteed title. The records remain presumptive, and moving a presumptive record from paper to a screen makes it easier to read, not more conclusive. Conclusive, state-guaranteed title would need separate legislation, a completed resurvey and a settlement of existing claims, and that has not happened at scale.

Certified copy or screen printout?

This catches people out at the worst moment, usually when a bank rejects a document pack. What you print from a portal is normally an informational copy, and many portals print a disclaimer saying exactly that. It is good enough for your own due diligence.

A certified copy is issued by the authority that holds the record and carries its signature, or a digital signature with a verifiable reference number. That is the version a bank's legal team, a sub-registrar or a court will want. Most states now issue digitally signed copies through the same portal for a small fee, which is the sensible route: the authenticity can be checked against the issuing system rather than taken on trust.

If a seller or broker hands you a printed extract, verify it yourself on the portal rather than accepting the paper, and check its date. An extract that is a year old tells you about the position a year ago, and in a disputed property that is plenty of time for a fresh entry to appear.

How does a record get updated after a sale?

Registration and mutation are separate steps with separate purposes, and a buyer who stops after the first is only half done.

Registration means presenting the sale deed at the sub-registrar's office, paying stamp duty and the registration fee, and having the document entered in the register. A sale of immovable property must be registered to be effective, and the registered deed is the instrument that transfers the interest. Our stamp duty, registration and property tax guide covers the cost side, with a stamp duty calculator for the numbers.

Mutation is the revenue department updating its register so the recorded holder becomes the buyer. The shape is consistent across states: an application to the tehsildar, mandal or taluk office with the registered deed and identity documents, a notice period for objections, then an entry in the mutation register that flows through to the record of rights. In several states registration now pushes the request across automatically; in others the buyer must apply, and nothing happens if they do not.

Mutation does not confer title and cannot cure a defective deed. It makes the state's record match reality, which matters because the revenue and tax machinery works from it, the next buyer will check it, and a long gap between registration and mutation is one of the commonest reasons a resale deal stalls years later.

So after you register, apply for mutation, keep the acknowledgement, and go back to the portal a few weeks later to confirm your name appears. Do not take the office's word for it. The registration checklist sets out the documents to carry.

What can an online extract not tell you?

This is the part of the page that matters most, because the extract is so easy to get that it is easy to over-read.

It cannot tell you who owns the land. It tells you whose name the revenue department has recorded. Those are usually the same and sometimes not, and the gap is where litigation lives. It cannot show you unregistered claims: an agreement to sell that was never registered, an oral family arrangement, a will that has not been acted on, a share claimed by a daughter or a coparcener, a tenant's claim based on long possession. An extract with a single clean name on it can sit on top of three competing claims.

And for a flat the record usually tells you nothing at all, which is the next section.

Do these portals cover flats and urban plots?

Mostly not, and this is the most common wasted search. The revenue record is built around survey numbers of land. An apartment is an undivided share in land plus a defined unit in a building, and that does not fit a survey-number register. You can pull the record for the land the project sits on, but you will not find your flat in it.

For an urban property the paper trail is different. The registered deed and its chain backwards is the primary document. The encumbrance certificate covers registered transactions. The municipal property tax record, called the khata in Karnataka, establishes who the civic body bills. The approved plan, commencement certificate and occupancy certificate establish that the building is legal, and for an ongoing project the RERA registration is where the promoter's declarations sit. Some states, Gujarat among them, also issue urban property cards that do function as a record of rights for city land.

Where the revenue record still earns its place for an urban buyer is at the project level. Pull the record for the land under the project and look for three things: whether the promoter or landowner is actually the recorded holder, whether the classification permits what is being built, and whether a charge is noted against the land. A project on land the promoter does not hold, or on land whose classification was never converted, is a problem no glossy paperwork at the sales office fixes.

How a buyer should actually use these records

The online record is a cheap filter at the front of the process, not a substitute for the work at the back of it. The sequence that works looks like this.

1. Get the survey number and subdivision, the village and taluk, and the claimed extent from the seller in writing.
2. Pull the record of rights yourself on the state portal. Confirm the recorded name, the extent, the classification and tenure, and whether anything is noted in the other rights or encumbrance column.
3. Pull the mutation entries referenced in the record and read how the current name arrived.
4. Order an encumbrance certificate from the registration department for a period long enough to cover the chain you care about, normally at least the last thirty years.
5. Walk the land with the seller and, for anything other than a small flat purchase, get a licensed surveyor to demarcate against the cadastral map.
6. Check the planning side separately: zoning, the development plan, any reservation or alignment, and for a project the approvals and the RERA entry.
7. Then hand the whole pack, including the deeds, to a property lawyer for a title search over the statutory period. That search, not the extract, is what tells you whether the title is good.
8. After registration, apply for mutation and go back to the portal to confirm your name has actually been entered.

Treat anything the record cannot answer as a question for a professional rather than an assumption in your favour. A clean extract plus a thirty-year title search that agrees with it is a strong position. A clean extract on its own is a start and nothing more.

Our property documents checklist sets out the full pack by property type, and how to buy a home in India puts the records step in sequence. The property tax calculator and the other free tools cover the cost side once the paperwork clears.