Khasra & Khatauni Explained: How to Read a Land Record

What Is a Khasra Number

A khasra number is the unique identifier given to a single field or plot of land within a village, as recorded in the revenue department's land records. It is the North Indian counterpart to what southern and western states call a "survey number" (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu), a "gat number" (parts of Maharashtra), or a "dag number" (West Bengal) — different regional names for the same underlying idea: every parcel of land in a village needs one identifier that never changes, regardless of who owns it or what's grown on it.

The term itself, and the system behind it, is older than most people assume. Village-level land record-keeping in the Indian subcontinent — a patwari (village revenue accountant) walking each field, numbering it, and logging who cultivates it and what's growing — predates British colonial administration by centuries. What the colonial land revenue settlements did was standardise and formalise this into the structured system still in use today: a village map called the shajra, on which every field is drawn and numbered, and a corresponding register called the khasra girdawari, which lists each numbered field's area, soil type, and crop history, updated through periodic field inspections (girdawari) that traditionally happen at least twice a year, once per cropping season.

Khasra numbers are used as the primary land-record identifier in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, and several other North Indian states that trace their revenue administration back to the same lineage of land settlements — which happens to be every state in Farmland India's own six-state corridor. A few things are worth knowing about the number itself before you go looking for one:

• It identifies the plot, not the owner. A khasra number is fixed to a specific piece of land. Who owns or cultivates that land is a separate fact, recorded in the khatauni (covered next) — the khasra number itself doesn't change when the land is sold or inherited.
• It can carry a sub-number after a plot is split. When a field is physically divided — most often through inheritance or a partial sale — the original khasra number is typically suffixed (e.g. khasra 125 becomes 125/1 and 125/2). Seeing a sub-numbered khasra on an old document is a signal to check whether the specific fraction you're being sold matches the specific sub-number in the record.
• Its area is usually recorded in local units first. Most khasra records state area in bigha-biswa (the traditional North Indian land measure, itself with slightly different conversion values state to state) alongside — or sometimes only convertible to — hectares or acres. Always convert to a single consistent unit before comparing the record's stated area against what a seller or broker has quoted you.
• It sits inside a village, not a district. Khasra numbers are unique within a village's revenue map, not across an entire district or state — which is exactly why every state portal in this guide asks you to select district, then tehsil, then village, before you can search a khasra number at all.

It's also worth knowing that the specific revenue system a state inherited shapes how its khasra records behave today. Most of the corridor states were part of the "mahalwari" and "ryotwari"-influenced revenue settlements of North and Western India, where land revenue and record-keeping were assessed village by village and field by field — as opposed to the zamindari (landlord-based) settlement historically used in Bengal and parts of Bihar, where records were built around large estates rather than individual cultivator holdings. Post-independence land reforms, particularly the abolition of the zamindari system through the 1950s, pushed most of North India toward the cultivator-centric khasra-khatauni model used today, with the patwari's field-by-field numbering as its backbone. That history matters practically: it's why a khasra number is tied to the actual cultivated field rather than to a larger estate boundary, and why the record is maintained at the village level even in states with fully centralised digital portals.

What Is a Khatauni

If the khasra tells you which plot you're looking at, the khatauni tells you who holds rights over it. A khatauni is the ownership and tenancy record that lists, against a specific landholder's name, every khasra number that person (or group of co-sharers) holds in that village, their share in each, and the legal nature of their right — full owner-cultivator (recorded historically as "bhumidar" in UP, "khatedar" in Rajasthan, and under similar terms elsewhere), tenant, or another tenancy class depending on the state's land-tenure history. You'll also see it spelled "Khatoni" in some documents and portals — it's the same record, just a transliteration variant of the same Hindi/Urdu-origin term, and the two spellings are used interchangeably in practice.

A closely related term causes most of the confusion here: the Khata number. In everyday use the two are often treated as near-synonyms, but there's a real distinction worth holding onto. The Khata is the account or holding — the grouping of one or more khasra numbers under a single landholder's name in the village revenue record. The Khatauni is, formally, the register or extract document that actually lists those khata entries in detail, refreshed at each land settlement (a periodic, decades-apart revenue exercise) and updated continuously in between through mutation. In most states' online portals today, when you search by "khata number" or "khatauni number" you are, practically speaking, retrieving the same underlying record — but knowing the two terms aren't identical helps when a document or clerk uses one and not the other.

Two relationships matter more than the terminology, though:

• One khatauni can list several khasra numbers. A family that has accumulated or inherited multiple, non-contiguous fields in the same village will have all of them listed under their one khatauni entry, not a separate record per field.
• One khasra number can appear on more than one person's khatauni. This is extremely common with inherited agricultural land in India, where a plot passes to multiple legal heirs who never formally partition it. The khasra stays a single physical parcel, but the khatauni shows it as jointly held, with each co-sharer's fractional share recorded (or, in poorly maintained records, not clearly recorded at all — which is itself one of the red flags covered later in this guide).

The Record of Rights & Jamabandi System

Khasra and khatauni aren't standalone documents — they're the two core components of a broader record collectively known across India as the Record of Rights (RoR). In Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan, the combined khasra-khatauni extract is called the Jamabandi (literally, "fixing of the rent/revenue"), and a certified copy of it is called a Nakal. In Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, people more often refer to the same combined document loosely as the "khasra-khatauni," without a separate umbrella name in everyday use, though the underlying legal concept — a Record of Rights — is identical. Alongside the khasra and khatauni sits the shajra (the village cadastral map showing every plot's boundary and shape) and, in Punjab and Haryana specifically, the khewat (a numbering of ownership shares that groups khatas belonging to the same joint family or ownership unit).

The Record of Rights isn't a document that's written once and left alone. It's revised on two different timescales:

• Major settlement revisions, a full re-survey and re-recording of an entire revenue estate, historically happening every few decades (the exact interval and the state's current settlement cycle vary, and in several corridor states the last full settlement is old enough that mutation-driven updates, not fresh surveys, are what keep the record current day to day).
• Continuous updates through mutation (called dakhil-kharij in Hindi-belt states, or intkal in Punjab and parts of Haryana) — the process that updates the khatauni whenever land changes hands, through a sale, inheritance, gift, partition, or court decree.

This second point is the single most important mechanic in this whole guide, because it's exactly where a lot of due-diligence failures — and a meaningful share of the fraud patterns covered in our companion guide, Land Fraud in India — actually live. Registering a sale deed at the Sub-Registrar's office and mutating the revenue record are two separate steps, done at two different offices, and completing the first does not automatically complete the second. A buyer can walk away from a registration office holding a validly registered sale deed, while the khatauni at the tehsil still shows the seller's name for weeks, months, or — if nobody follows up — indefinitely. That gap matters for two practical reasons: it's the seller's cue that a genuinely diligent buyer will chase mutation through to completion rather than assuming registration alone finished the job, and it's a mechanism fraudsters have learned to exploit, because an unmutated record can be quietly sold again, mortgaged, or used to obscure who the land's real, current legal claimant actually is.

The Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) is the central government initiative behind most of the state portals covered in this guide — it pushes states toward integrating registration and mutation so the second step happens automatically, or near-automatically, once a deed is registered. Progress on that integration varies meaningfully by state and even by district within a state, which is exactly why the practical advice in this guide is: don't assume digitisation has closed the registration-to-mutation gap in the specific district you're buying in. Verify it directly.

There's a second, quieter reason the khasra girdawari (the crop-inspection register mentioned earlier) matters beyond simple record-keeping: in several states it functions as informal, corroborating evidence of who is actually in physical possession and cultivation of a plot, season after season, independent of what the ownership column says. Courts have, in appropriate cases, looked at a consistent girdawari history — years of the same person recorded as the cultivator — as supporting evidence in ownership and possession disputes. That's one more reason a single, static khatauni printout is a starting point rather than a complete picture: a multi-year girdawari history tells you whether the paper record and the on-ground reality have actually been telling the same story.

How to Read a Khasra-Khatauni Record

A printed or downloaded khasra-khatauni extract (a "nakal") will vary slightly in exact layout from state to state, but the core fields are consistent enough that once you can read one, you can read all of them. Below is a worked, illustrative example — the village name, khasra numbers, and owner names are invented for demonstration only and don't correspond to any real record — showing the kind of fields you should expect to see and specifically know how to check.

A few things this table is designed to make obvious. The Khasra No. and Area columns are what you cross-check first against the sale deed and against what's marketed to you — a mismatch here, even a small one, is the exact mechanism behind wrong-parcel sales covered in our fraud guide. The Khatauni No. and Owner columns are what you cross-check against the seller's identity documents; a name that doesn't match, or a "mutation pending" note against a recent inheritance, tells you the person in front of you may not yet be the legally recorded holder even if they genuinely are the rightful heir. The Land Classification column determines what you can legally do with the land — an "agricultural" plot and a "Gair Mumkin Abadi" (non-agricultural habitation) plot next to each other in the same village can have completely different rules for use, sale eligibility to certain buyer categories, and conversion requirements (our guide on Change of Land Use (CLU) covers what's involved in converting one classification to another). And the Remarks / Encumbrance column is, plainly, the single most important cell on the page — a pending mortgage, an unresolved inheritance, a government-land flag, or a live court case here should stop a transaction cold until it's resolved, not just noted and worked around.

Some states' extracts carry a few extra columns beyond the six shown above — a soil-class or irrigation-source column (canal, tube well, rain-fed), a separate cess or land-revenue-due column, and, in states further along in digitisation, a unique property/parcel ID that links the khasra to a GIS map layer. None of these change the core reading method: identify the plot, confirm who holds it, confirm what it's classified as, and read the remarks column last and most carefully, since it's the field most likely to be stale on an old printout.

Where to Pull These Records Online — State by State

Every state in Farmland India's six-state corridor now runs some form of digitised khasra-khatauni access, though the portal name, exact search flow, and how far digitisation has actually reached vary state to state. Below is what each one offers, and where to go. We've also linked two dedicated deep-dive guides — one live for Uttar Pradesh and one for Haryana at time of writing — for readers who want a full walkthrough of a specific state's portal rather than the overview here.

Uttar Pradesh — UP Bhulekh

UP's land records portal, UP Bhulekh (upbhulekh.gov.in), lets you retrieve a khatauni extract by drilling down through district, tehsil, and village, then searching by khasra number, khata number, or the khatedar's name. A companion service, Bhu Naksha, provides the corresponding shajra (cadastral map) layer, so you can see the plot's shape and boundaries alongside its ownership record — useful for the physical, on-ground khasra match described above. For a full walkthrough of the UP Bhulekh search flow, see our dedicated guide: UP Bhulekh Land Records(coming soon).

Haryana — Jamabandi (WEB-HALRIS)

Haryana's portal, run by the state Revenue Department through the National Informatics Centre and reachable at jamabandi.nic.in, offers Jamabandi Nakal retrieval, mutation status tracking, and registered-deed search from one place. The state has one of the longer digitisation track records in the corridor — the portal's own background notes that Haryana began computerising land records as far back as 1991, with an early pilot at Rewari, well ahead of most states' digitisation efforts. For the full search walkthrough, see our dedicated guide: Haryana Jamabandi Portal(coming soon).

Rajasthan — Apna Khata

Rajasthan's Apna Khata portal (apnakhata.raj.nic.in) provides jamabandi nakal retrieval through the same district-tehsil-village drill-down, searchable by khata or khasra number. It sits alongside Rajasthan's broader E-Dharti digital cadastral initiative, which is progressively linking khasra parcel boundaries to GIS map layers — useful context if you're trying to visually confirm a parcel's shape and location rather than relying on the text record alone.

Punjab — Land Records Society (PLRS) / Fard

Punjab uses the term Fard for its Record of Rights extract — functionally the same document as a jamabandi nakal elsewhere. Records are accessible through the Punjab Land Records Society's portal infrastructure (plrs.org.in, with records also served through jamabandi.punjab.gov.in), searchable by district, tehsil, village, and khewat, khasra, or owner name. Punjab's portal also tracks mutation (intkal) status, which matters given how often Punjab agricultural land passes through NRI-held family holdings where a completed mutation can otherwise lag for years.

Uttarakhand — Devbhoomi Land Records

Uttarakhand, carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, inherited the same khasra-khatauni terminology and record structure, now served through its own Devbhoomi portal (bhulekh.uk.gov.in). One thing worth knowing specifically for Uttarakhand: hill-district landholdings are often smaller, more fragmented, and terraced compared to plains agricultural land, and consolidation (chakbandi) coverage in hill districts has historically lagged the plains districts — worth an extra, specific check on whether a hill-district khasra number is final or still provisional pending consolidation.

Himachal Pradesh — HimBhoomi

Himachal Pradesh's land records portal, HimBhoomi (himbhoomi.nic.in, also reachable through the state's himachal.nic.in district land-record services), uses jamabandi/Record-of-Rights terminology similar to Punjab and Haryana. As with Uttarakhand, hill-terrain HP districts have historically had uneven consolidation and settlement coverage, so a mismatch between what the khatauni shows and what's actually being physically possessed and cultivated is worth checking with extra care here rather than assumed away.

Common Discrepancies and Red Flags

Most problems with a khasra-khatauni record fall into a small, recognisable set of patterns. None of them automatically mean fraud is in progress — inheritance and consolidation genuinely take time to catch up in the record — but each one is a reason to pause and resolve the discrepancy before you proceed, not to explain it away:

• Owner name on the khatauni doesn't match the seller's identity documents. Most commonly this means mutation hasn't caught up with an inheritance or an earlier sale. Ask directly: has the mutation application actually been filed, and where does it currently stand?
• Khasra number or area in the sale deed doesn't match the revenue record. Even a small transcription difference can, in practice, mean you're being sold a different or smaller parcel than the one you inspected — this is the exact mechanism behind wrong-parcel sales.
• Land classification doesn't match how the land is being marketed to you. A plot recorded as "Banjar" (uncultivable wasteland) or "Gair Mumkin" (recorded as put to some non-agricultural use) sold to you as productive farmland — or a plot classified as government or panchayat land altogether — changes both what you're legally allowed to do with it and whether it can be transferred to you at all.
• The remarks/encumbrance column is blank on an old printout, but a fresh extract tells a different story. A mortgage, litigation entry, or acquisition notice can all post-date whatever copy you were first shown.
• Consolidation (chakbandi) is still pending in that village. In areas where consolidation hasn't been finalised, khasra numbers can still be provisional — meaning the very identifier you're relying on could be renumbered once consolidation completes.
• Undivided co-ownership without clearly apportioned shares. A khasra jointly held across several khatauni entries, with shares recorded vaguely or not at all, is a common source of later partition disputes — and a single co-sharer selling "the whole plot" without the others' documented consent is not a clean sale.
• A khewat or khata number that doesn't tie back to a consistent family/ownership unit. In Punjab and Haryana specifically, the khewat groups related khatas together; a khewat structure that looks fragmented or inconsistent with the seller's stated family history is worth asking about directly rather than assuming it's a clerical quirk.
• A girdawari (crop-inspection) history that doesn't match who's selling you the land. If years of girdawari entries show a different person actually cultivating the plot than the one recorded as owner — or than the one now selling it to you — that gap between paper ownership and physical possession is worth resolving before, not after, you pay.

Why This Matters Before You Buy

Khasra and khatauni records, together with the shajra map and the mutation history, should be the very first documents pulled in any land due-diligence process — before price negotiation, before a token advance, before anything else. They're the cheapest, fastest, and most objective way to confirm three things that everything else in a transaction depends on: that the parcel physically exists where and how it's described, that it's the size the seller claims, and that the person offering to sell it is, in fact, the person the government's own record currently recognises as holding it.

They are not, on their own, a complete due-diligence process. A clean khatauni doesn't rule out an undisclosed court case sitting outside the revenue record, a forged Power of Attorney behind a "seller" who isn't the real owner, or a Section 22A prohibited-land flag that only shows up on an Encumbrance Certificate. Every fraud pattern covered in our companion guide, Land Fraud in India — How It Works and How to Spot It, has some footprint in the records explained here — which is exactly why that guide keeps pointing back to this one for the mechanics, and why this one points forward to that guide for what happens when the mechanics are deliberately manipulated. For eligibility questions this record ties into — who is legally permitted to hold agricultural land in the first place, and under what state-specific conditions — see Who Can Own Farmland in India and Agricultural Land Laws in Different States in India.

This matters even more for a buyer who can't easily visit the village in person — an NRI, a family office evaluating a corridor-wide portfolio, or anyone buying land at a distance from where they live. A khasra-khatauni record is one of the few pieces of due diligence that can be pulled entirely remotely, in minutes, directly from a state government portal, with no dependence on what a local agent or relative reports back. That doesn't replace an on-ground physical inspection eventually — the boundary-matching step described above still has to happen in person, or through someone you trust to do it properly — but it means the very first filter, confirming a plot exists as described before anyone travels or wires money, doesn't require being in the state at all.

Common Mistakes

• Accepting a photocopy from the seller or broker instead of pulling your own certified nakal directly from the state portal or tehsil office.
• Skipping the physical, on-ground match between the khasra boundary on the shajra map and the actual survey markers at the site.
• Treating a registered sale deed as the finish line and never following up on whether mutation of the khatauni actually completed.
• Ignoring the land classification column because a broker has verbally described the land as agricultural, without checking what the record itself says.
• Relying on an old, undated printout instead of pulling a fresh extract shortly before signing.

How Farmland India Helps

Every parcel and developer project carrying a Farmland India Reviewed status has had its khasra number and khatauni cross-checked directly against the relevant state land-records portal or tehsil record — not summarised from a description the seller or developer provided. For a buyer who isn't in a position to personally navigate six different state portals and their varying digitisation levels, that independent check replaces a step that's easy to skip and expensive to get wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions