Patta, khata and the encumbrance certificate: the South India records a buyer must get right

A patta is Tamil Nadu's revenue record of who holds a survey number. A khata is Karnataka's municipal property tax account. An encumbrance certificate is the sub-registrar's list of registered transactions against a property. None of the three is a title deed, and a buyer needs the registered deed plus a lawyer's title search as well.

What is a patta?

A patta is the Tamil Nadu revenue department's record of rights for a piece of land. It is issued in the name of the recorded holder by the tahsildar of the taluk, and it identifies the land by village, survey number and subdivision, with the extent and the land classification. It carries a patta number, which is the holder's account number in that village, and one patta can cover several survey numbers held by the same person.

What the patta tells you is that the revenue department has recorded this person as holder of this survey number and assesses them accordingly. That is useful, because a patta in the seller's name is consistent with their claim to possession. But it is a revenue entry, and revenue entries have never been treated as conclusive proof of ownership in Indian law. A patta can be issued on the strength of documents that later turn out to be defective, and it can sit in one name while another person has a good claim.

The commonest misunderstanding is asking for a patta for a flat. A patta attaches to land identified by survey number, so an apartment on the eighth floor cannot have one. What exists is a patta for the land the building stands on. For independent houses and plots, a patta in the seller's name is an expected part of the pack. For a flat, the equivalent checks are the registered deed, the parent document for the land, the encumbrance certificate and the approvals.

Tamil Nadu publishes patta details through its e-services portal and through Tamil Nilam. A screen view is useful for a first check; for a bank or a sub-registrar you need a certified or digitally signed copy. Our guide to land records online covers the state portals and that distinction.

What did chitta add, and where did it go?

Before the records were consolidated, Tamil Nadu buyers were told to collect two documents and were rarely told why. The patta came from the taluk office and recorded the holder of the survey number. The chitta was maintained at village level by the village administrative officer and recorded the holding together with the land's classification, in particular whether it was nanjai, wet land, or punjai, dry land. Alongside both sat the adangal, the cultivation register, and the A-register extract, the village's detailed record of each survey number.

Because the two documents overlapped, and because two registers invited them to drift apart, the state merged the content into a single record. You now ask for a patta and expect the classification information chitta used to carry to be on it. Anyone insisting on a separate chitta is working from old instructions.

The classification itself still matters. Wet or dry classification affects what can be done with agricultural land, and land classified as government poramboke or assessed waste should stop a transaction entirely. On agricultural land, read the classification line first, and if you intend to build, deal with conversion to non-agricultural use before money changes hands.

What is a khata in Karnataka?

A khata is not the Karnataka equivalent of a patta, and treating it as one causes real problems. A patta is a revenue record. A khata is a municipal or panchayat property tax account. It records that a given property exists on the civic body's books, gives its assessed details such as dimensions, built area and usage, and names the person the tax demand goes to. Having a khata means the corporation knows about your property and bills you for it. It does not mean you own it, and it is not evidence of title.

Two documents come out of the khata register and buyers mix them up. A khata certificate is a short confirmation that the property stands registered in a named person's khata, typically produced for a water or electricity connection or a trade licence. A khata extract is the detail: the assessed particulars as entered in the register. For due diligence you want the extract, because that is where recorded dimensions and usage can be compared against what is built.

Karnataka's revenue record of rights is a different document again: the RTC or pahani, served through Bhoomi, organised by survey number. For agricultural land and plots in revenue layouts the RTC matters. For a flat or house inside municipal limits the khata is what the corporation works from, and the RTC for the underlying survey number is a project-level check.

A khata transfer is the municipal counterpart of mutation. After registering a purchase you apply to the civic body to move the khata into your name, producing the registered deed, the previous owner's khata and tax receipts up to date. Until that is done the tax demand keeps going to the seller, and your resale will stall when the next buyer's bank asks for a khata in your name.

A-khata or B-khata: what is the real difference?

The nicknames are not two grades of the same thing. They refer to two different registers.

The A register is the civic body's regular property assessment register. A property entered there has been accepted as lawful: the land use was converted where it needed to be, the layout was approved, the building plan was sanctioned and the construction broadly matches it, and the betterment charges were paid. An A-khata property is on the normal track for everything that follows, from a building licence to a bank loan.

The B register is a separate list created so that the civic body could levy and collect tax on properties that did not meet those requirements. The reasoning was practical: a large number of properties had been built on unconverted land, in unapproved layouts, in deviation from sanctioned plans, or on revenue land never brought into the municipal fold, and the corporation wanted the revenue either way. So the property was entered in the B register, taxed, and issued what people call a B-khata.

That is the point that matters: a B-khata is a tax entry, not an approval. Paying tax on a B-khata property for fifteen years does not regularise it. The receipts prove you paid tax; they do not prove the property complies with planning law.

A-khata and B-khata compared on the things that affect a buyer

Aspect	A-khata	B-khata
What it means	Property is on the regular assessment register as a lawful, approved property	Property is recorded for tax purposes despite not meeting approval or layout requirements
Underlying compliance	Land use converted, layout approved, plan sanctioned, charges paid	One or more of those missing
Home loan	Accepted by mainstream lenders as a matter of routine	Usually declined by banks; sometimes financed by non-banking lenders at a higher rate and lower loan-to-value
Building licence	Available	Not normally available, so construction or extension is irregular from the start
Resale	Full buyer pool	Narrow buyer pool, largely cash buyers, and a visible discount to comparable A-khata property
Risk of action	Low on the approvals front	Exposed to demolition or penalty action where the deviation is serious
Can it change?	Not applicable	Only by curing the underlying defect, which may be impossible for some properties

Converting a B-khata to an A-khata is not a form-filling exercise. It means fixing whatever made the property non-compliant: getting the land use converted, getting the layout approved, paying betterment charges and any penalty, and bringing the construction within what can be sanctioned. Where the defect is small and procedural, that can be done. Where the layout itself was never approvable, or the building covers land it should not, there may be no route at all. Governments have periodically opened regularisation windows, and those windows have been contested in court and have not been reliably available. Do not buy a B-khata property on the assumption that a scheme will appear and rescue it.

Why is B-khata property harder to finance?

A lender's security is the property. If the property can be the subject of planning action, or if the chain of approvals behind it is incomplete, the lender's legal and technical appraisal flags it and the file stops. That is the whole of the reason, and it is why the problem does not go away with a better interest rate or a bigger down payment.

The practical effects stack up. Mainstream banks typically decline, so you are pushed towards non-banking lenders who may lend at a higher rate against a lower share of the value, meaning you need more cash up front for a property that is worth less. When you come to sell, your buyer faces the same wall, so your market is mostly people paying cash. The discount to comparable A-khata property is real and it tends to widen rather than narrow, because the compliant stock around it keeps appreciating on a normal curve while yours does not.

None of this means B-khata property is worthless or that nobody should ever buy it. People do buy it knowingly, for a price that reflects the problem, usually for self-use rather than as an investment, and usually after a lawyer has looked specifically at what the defect is and whether it is curable. What is dangerous is buying it unknowingly, which happens when the seller presents a tax-paid receipt and a khata document and the buyer does not read which register it came from. Ask the question directly, in writing, and check the document rather than the answer.

What is an encumbrance certificate?

An encumbrance certificate, usually just called an EC, is a statement issued by the sub-registrar's office listing the transactions registered against a specified property during a period you nominate. It is a search of the registration index, not an opinion about the property. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh all issue ECs through their registration departments, and in each case you request it against the property's identification details for a stated date range.

What shows up on it is anything that was registered: sale deeds, gift deeds, partition deeds, settlement deeds, mortgages and the releases of mortgages, leases where they were registered, court attachments where they were registered. Read in sequence, a good EC is the registered history of the property, and it is the single most useful document for spotting the thing that matters most: a break or an oddity in the chain.

A nil encumbrance certificate is what you get when no transaction was registered against the property during the period requested. On a long-held ancestral property that is normal and unremarkable. On a property that was supposedly bought five years ago it means something is wrong, either with the property or with the details you searched on. A nil EC is a result, not a clean bill of health.

What period should you ask an EC for?

Ask for a period long enough to cover the chain of title you care about. In practice that means at least the last thirty years, which is the period property lawyers normally trace and which aligns with the general limitation period for claims to immovable property. A shorter EC, thirteen or fifteen years, is sometimes taken as a quick check or because the office's electronic index does not reach further back, but a lender's legal opinion will usually want the longer period, and so should you.

Two cautions on period. First, registration records were computerised at different times in different districts, so an EC covering the years before computerisation may need a manual search at the office rather than an instant online output. Expect that to take longer and ask for it anyway. Second, order the EC yourself rather than relying on a copy handed over by the seller, and order it again close to the date of registration. An EC that was accurate three months ago does not tell you whether a mortgage was created last week.

What does an EC not reveal?

This is where most of the damage happens, because a clean EC feels conclusive and is not.

An EC covers registered transactions. Anything that was never taken to the sub-registrar is invisible to it. That includes an unregistered agreement to sell, under which someone may have paid most of the price and taken possession. It includes oral family arrangements and informal partitions, which are extremely common. It includes a will that has not been acted on. It includes the share of a daughter or another coparcener in ancestral property, which exists in law whether or not anyone registered anything. It includes a tenant's claim based on long possession, and in agricultural land a tenancy protected by state law.

It also will not show you pending litigation in most cases, unless a court order happened to be registered. A suit for partition, an injunction, an appeal against a revenue order: none of these is in the registration index. Nor does an EC speak to whether the building is legal. Approvals, the sanctioned plan, the commencement certificate and the occupancy certificate sit with the planning authority, and for an ongoing project the promoter's declarations sit with RERA.

And an EC is only as good as the details you searched on. If the property is described imprecisely, or the survey number has been subdivided and renumbered, or an earlier transaction was registered against a different description of the same land, the search can come back clean because it looked in the wrong place. This is one of several reasons a lawyer should be doing the search rather than the buyer.

So the honest framing is this: a clean EC over thirty years narrows the risk substantially and is a document you must have. It does not establish that the title is good. Only a title search over the statutory period, reading the actual deeds and not just the index, does that.

Registration or mutation: what is the difference?

Registration is the act of presenting the executed sale deed at the sub-registrar's office, paying stamp duty and the registration fee, and having the instrument entered in the register. This is the step that transfers the interest in the property from seller to buyer. Without it the sale of immovable property is not effective, and the deed will not be admissible as evidence of the transfer. Costs are covered in our stamp duty, registration and property tax guide, with a stamp duty calculator for the numbers.

Mutation is the authority updating its own record so that you are the person it recognises. Which authority depends on the property. For agricultural or revenue land it is the revenue department, through the tahsildar, mandal or taluk office, which updates the patta or the RTC. For an urban property inside municipal limits it is the civic body, which transfers the khata and redirects the property tax demand. Both are commonly described as mutation and both follow the same shape: apply with the registered deed and identity documents, a notice period for objections, then an entry.

Mutation does not transfer ownership and cannot fix a defective deed. The Supreme Court has said as much repeatedly: a mutation entry is a fiscal record, not an instrument of title. But skipping it is a serious practical mistake for three reasons. The tax demand continues to go to the seller and arrears accumulate against the property rather than against them. The authority's records still show someone else, which affects everything from a utility connection to a building licence. And the next buyer's bank will ask for a mutated record in your name, so a resale years later turns into a scramble to complete a step you should have done at the time.

The sequence is therefore: register, then apply for mutation or khata transfer, keep the acknowledgement, and then go back and confirm the record actually shows your name. Our registration checklist sets out what to carry.

Patta, khata, EC and mutation compared

What each document proves, who issues it and when you need it

Document	Issued by	What it proves	What it does not prove	When you need it
Patta (Tamil Nadu)	Tahsildar, revenue department	Who is recorded as holder of a survey number, with extent and land classification	Ownership in law; and it does not exist for an individual flat	Buying land, a plot or an independent house in Tamil Nadu; and after purchase, in your own name
Khata (Karnataka)	Municipal body or gram panchayat	That the property is on the civic assessment register, in whose name, and with what assessed particulars	Ownership; and a B-khata does not prove the property is approved	Before buying in Karnataka, to check which register it sits in; and for the transfer after purchase
Encumbrance certificate	Sub-registrar, department of registration and stamps	Which transactions were registered against the property in the period requested	Unregistered claims, family disputes, pending litigation, or that the building is legal	Before paying any substantial money, for at least thirty years, and again just before registration
Mutation or khata transfer	Revenue department or civic body	That the authority's own record now shows you as the person liable	Title; it cannot cure a defective deed	Immediately after registration, as a step you must initiate
Registered sale deed	Executed by the parties, registered with the sub-registrar	The actual transfer of interest from seller to buyer	That the seller's own chain of title was sound	At purchase, and it is the document the whole pack is built around

What should a buyer in Chennai, Bengaluru or Hyderabad collect?

The underlying logic is the same in all three cities. Establish what the land is and who holds it, establish what has been registered against it, establish that the building is legal, then have a lawyer read the deeds. What changes is the local document names and one or two local traps.

Records to collect, by city

Step	Chennai	Bengaluru	Hyderabad
Land record	Patta, plus the A-register extract and adangal for land	RTC or pahani from Bhoomi for the underlying survey number	Revenue record of rights for the survey number, via the state system
Civic or tax record	Property tax assessment with the corporation	Khata extract and certificate, and which register it sits in	Municipal property tax assessment and the relevant property record
Registered history	Encumbrance certificate, thirty years	Encumbrance certificate, thirty years	Encumbrance certificate, thirty years
Deeds	Parent document and the chain of sale, gift, partition and settlement deeds	Mother deed and the chain, plus the conversion order where the land was agricultural	Link documents and the chain, plus any conversion order
Building legality	Planning permission and completion certificate	Sanctioned plan, commencement certificate and occupancy certificate	Sanctioned plan and occupancy certificate
Project, if under construction	RERA registration and the declared completion date	RERA registration and the declared completion date	RERA registration and the declared completion date
Local trap to look for	Land classified as poramboke or never converted	B-khata, and layouts never approved by the planning authority	Land in a prohibited or disputed category, and unconverted agricultural land
After purchase	Patta transfer and tax assessment in your name	Khata transfer and tax assessment in your name	Mutation and tax assessment in your name

Add to all three the things that do not vary: identity and title documents of every seller, a no-objection or release from any co-owner or co-sharer, the latest tax receipts, the loan closure and mortgage release if the property was financed, and the society or association dues clearance for a flat. Our property documents checklist has the full pack, and how to buy a home in India sets it in sequence with the money side.

Where do buyers go wrong?

Five mistakes account for most of the trouble, and all five are avoidable in an afternoon.

Treating a patta or a khata as proof of ownership. Both are records of who the state collects from. A seller producing either is giving you supporting evidence, not title. The deeds and the title search are what decide.

Accepting a khata document without checking which register it came from. A tax-paid receipt and a khata document look reassuring. Read whether the property sits on the A register or the B register, because that one fact changes what you can borrow, what you can build, and what you can sell it for.

Reading a nil or clean EC as safety. It covers registered transactions only, for the period you asked for, against the description you searched on. Unregistered agreements and family claims are exactly the things it cannot see, and they are among the commonest sources of dispute.

Stopping after registration. Mutation or khata transfer is a separate application that in most offices only happens because you make it. Buyers who assume it is automatic discover the gap years later, usually when a resale stalls.

Relying on documents the seller provides. Order the EC yourself. Pull the patta or the khata extract yourself. Verify any copy you are handed against the issuing system, and check the date on it. Then give the whole pack to a property lawyer for a thirty-year title search, which is the only step in this list that actually tells you whether the title is good.