A-khata, B-khata and e-khata

Khata, B-khata, e-khata: three words that get used loosely, and one flat can carry all three at once. A khata is the property’s entry in the civic tax register – nothing more, nothing less. Whether that entry is marked A or B depends on whether the site and the building on it follow the planning rules. And since late 2024 the entry has to exist in digital form, as an e-khata, before a sub-registrar in Bengaluru will register a sale at all.

None of this is new law dressed up. What changed after 2024 is enforcement – a hard digital gate at registration, a cut-off date after which an unlawful building gets no khata at all, and a standing scheme to move eligible B-khata properties into A. Its fee has already changed more than once, so treat any figure here as a snapshot, not a promise.

This guide is the deep version of two short sections in our documents guide. It does not contradict that guide; it works through the law behind it, the conversion scheme, the e-Aasthi process, the panchayat equivalent, and what a khata does and does not prove about who owns the flat.

What a khata is, and is not

A khata is defined in law as “a record of an immovable property maintained in the property tax register by the City Corporation.” The person it is recorded against is the khatadar – legally responsible for the tax, with the entry “presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted.” A khata extract is simply a printed or digital copy of that entry. All three terms come from the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, which replaced BBMP with the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) and five city corporations, each keeping its own property tax register.

A khata is used for a narrow, specific purpose – paying property tax – but in practice you need one on hand for a wider list of things: registering a sale, applying for a building licence or a trade licence, getting a permanent BESCOM or BWSSB connection, taking out a home loan, and reselling the flat later. Our property-tax guide covers how the bill itself is worked out; this guide covers the record the bill is built on.

What a khata is not: a building approval, or proof of title. “Presumed to be true until the contrary is proved” is not the same as conclusive – a khata can be corrected, and a better claim can displace it. The document that actually transfers ownership is the registered sale deed. Keep that distinction in mind through everything below; it is the difference a lot of khata confusion comes down to.

A-khata against B-khata

Why a property lands in B

The government’s own 2025 order on khata classification sets out, in effect, six situations. A property gets an A-khata where farmland has been formally converted for non-agricultural use under section 95 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 with the development charge paid; where the government itself has allotted the site; or where a layout built by an agency such as KIADB, the Karnataka Housing Board or KSSIDC has been formally handed to the corporation. It gets a B-khata where a revenue site up to 6,000 sq ft carries a building, the building itself is unauthorised, or a plot has been carved out of converted land without a proper subdivision. Where the cause is a building that departs from its plan, our guide to deviations and Akrama-Sakrama explains what can and cannot be regularised.

The tax law backs this up directly: a City Corporation may still levy and collect tax from a building built in violation of the bye-laws, in an unauthorised layout, or on revenue land – except where it sits on government or local-body land outright, which gets no registration at all. And there is a hard stop: no tax may be levied, collected or registered for an unauthorised building or vacant land created after 30 September 2024. Build unlawfully after that date, and there is no B-khata safety net – only exposure to demolition or sealing.

What a B-khata stops you doing

A B-khata property can be sold; the sale itself is not barred. What gets harder is everything around it: a bank weighing the flat as security, plan approval for any change to the building, and a straightforward resale, since the next buyer inherits the same flag. None of this is quantified anywhere official, so ask your own lender directly rather than assume a blanket refusal – and treat a B-khata on a flat you are considering as a question for the builder or seller, not a formality to wave past.

The B-to-A conversion scheme

The A/B split is not old. The government’s own account of the reform traces the practice of giving an unauthorised property a B-khata to a 2009 amendment inserting section 108-A into the earlier Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976. A scheme to move eligible B-khata properties into A has existed in some form since, and the Greater Bengaluru Authority opened its current drive in November 2025.

The fee is not a separate invention: it is the same charge a site pays for “single plot” approval under section 17 of the planning Act – the formal step an unapproved layout needs before it can carry an A-khata. Under the Master Plan’s zonal regulations, a plot up to 2,000 sq m pays five percent of the site’s guidance value in lieu of the land it would otherwise have had to set aside for a park or parking (nothing at all below 55 sq m); a plot between 2,000 and 4,000 sq m pays ten percent, or hands over ten percent of the plot as park land instead. Land earmarked for roads, drains or other public use is carved out of the deal altogether – the rules require it to be relinquished to the authority free of cost, not bought back at any percentage.

On top of that standing charge, the government cut the rate for a limited window: from five percent of guidance value to two percent, for a 100-day drive that opened in May 2026. Eligibility runs along the same line the tax law draws: the B-khata has to already exist, on a building or site created on or before 30 September 2024, with the property tax paid and no court case pending. The terms have moved more than once already, so check the rate in force before you rely on either figure.

The fee, worked through

Applications go through the same e-Aasthi system the khata itself is issued on. A straightforward application is usually disposed of in 20–30 days, against an outer limit of 60 days under the state’s citizen-service guarantee – on the government’s own account. It takes longer where the site sits on government land, or where a private road inside the layout first has to be declared a public road under section 212 of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, a step that carries no compensation for the land taken.

The e-khata on e-Aasthi

The e-khata is the digital form of the khata, issued through the e-Aasthi portal that GBA’s city corporations run (still at the bbmpeaasthi.karnataka.gov.in address, carried over from BBMP). The portal groups applications under three heads – Book Khata, New Khata and Multi Unit Khata – mapping onto a first request, a fresh site, and a building split into several flats.

To apply you need an Aadhaar-based identity check, your registered deed number, your property-tax application number, your BESCOM account number, and a photograph of the property. An encumbrance certificate is not required for the e-khata application itself, but you will need one anyway once the e-khata is used to register a sale or change the owner’s name, so it is worth having in hand either way.

Fixing mistakes or objecting

Where a mutation – a change of the person the khata is recorded against – is entered on the strength of a registered deed, a court order or someone’s own report, the corporation’s own procedure requires it to publish a notice and give not less than fifteen days for anyone to object before the change is certified. Beyond that published window, no general timetable or fee for correcting an error inside an e-khata itself is set out anywhere official that we could find; raise a mistake with the ward revenue office in writing, and keep a copy of whatever the portal issues in acknowledgement.

A new flat’s khata journey

Before you fix a registration date, ask the builder in writing exactly where the bulk application stands – provisional, final, or not yet filed – because a sub-registrar will not register a sale in Bengaluru without a khata on record, and “we’re applying for it” is not the same as having it. Our registration guide covers the day itself in full.

Transferring khata on resale

Buying an existing flat rather than a new one changes what you are asking for: not a first khata, but a transfer of an existing one into your name. Our resale guide covers where this sits in the wider buying process; the mechanics of the transfer itself are these.

The law gives both the seller and you three months from registration to notify the corporation of the change, though that step is skipped where the sub-registrar itself passes the transfer through automatically, as it usually does on a registered sale. Until the transfer is recorded, the seller stays liable for the tax as well as you – so do not leave it to chance. The corporation’s own procedure records the change through an intimation slip from the sub-registrar, with a public notice and the fifteen-day objection window already described; if the slip never arrives, you can report the transfer yourself, attaching a certified copy of the registered deed. No official fee or completion timetable is published beyond that fifteen-day window.

Before you pay for a resale flat, check the khata on e-Aasthi yourself: that it is still recorded in the seller’s name (or shows the sale pending, if registration has just happened), that the PID and property description match the sale deed and the tax receipts, and that there are no arrears flagged against it. Arrears sit with the property, not the person, so an unpaid bill from before you bought is still one you will be chased for.

Khata in panchayat areas

Outside the city corporations – in a gram panchayat area on Bengaluru’s fringes, which is where a number of newer apartment projects sit – there is no e-Aasthi and no A/B khata. The equivalent record is e-Swathu, kept by the gram panchayat under the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act, 1993, and accessed through the eswathu.karnataka.gov.in portal.

e-Swathu’s three forms

The panchayat’s own property record runs across three forms. Form 9 is the register of the property itself – the panchayat’s record of who holds the site and how it is assessed. Form 11A is the tax demand and collection record, and Form 11B is the arrears register, showing what is still owed. Extracts of all three are issued to the owner or an applicant through the panchayat’s own e-property software.

Two changes from 2025 matter for a buyer. A 2025 amendment bars a gram panchayat from issuing any new khata or property ID for a building site until the jurisdictional planning authority has approved the layout it sits in – a rule in force since 7 April 2025, with personal penalties for an official who issues one anyway. A panchayat may still tax a building that breaks this rule, at double the normal rate in its first year, but collecting that tax “does not confer any right to regularise violation made, or title, ownership or legal status,” the same principle the city tax law states for a B-khata.

That is why a “panchayat khata” apartment needs its own diligence chain, not a lighter one. Ask which planning authority covers the layout – BMRDA, BIAAPA or another local planning authority – and whether it actually approved it; our approvals guide covers who does what outside the city corporations. A layout approved after the fact is not the same as one approved before a single flat was sold.

Khata, the deed and the EC

Three documents, three different jobs. The sale deed is what transfers ownership: under a Supreme Court ruling from 2011, no title passes by an agreement to sell, a power of attorney or a will – only a registered sale deed does that. The encumbrance certificate shows what has been registered against the property: mortgages, sales, and anything else on record. The khata sits below both: it is the tax register’s own entry, “presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted” – a working assumption for billing, not a finding about who owns the flat.

Practically, that means a khata should follow the sale deed, not lead it. A khata in someone’s name is evidence that they are the person the corporation currently bills, and normally that is the owner – but where the two disagree, the registered deed and the EC are what settle the question, not the tax record. Our documents guide sets out how all four documents – deed, EC, khata and e-khata – fit into the fuller paper trail behind a flat.

1. The khata type. A or B, printed on the extract itself – the first thing to check, before anything else on the page.
2. The PID. The property’s identifier on the corporation’s register; it should match the number on your tax receipts and on the sale deed you are shown.
3. The khatadar. The name the record is held in. On a resale this should already be the seller’s name, not an earlier owner’s.
4. The property description. Flat number, building name, survey number and ward should match the sale deed and the sanctioned plan exactly.
5. The area. The built-up figure from the sale deed schedule, not carpet area; a mismatch with the occupancy certificate is a question for the builder.
6. The tax position. What has been paid, and to which year; arrears here are arrears you may end up paying.
7. What it does not show. Title, encumbrances or a pending court case – a khata proves a tax entry, not ownership.

Records by area, at a glance

Before you register or buy

• Ask for the khata type in writing – A or B – before you pay a booking amount, not at registration.
• On a new flat, ask where the bulk khata stands: provisional or final, and for the building’s own khata number.
• Check the e-khata on e-Aasthi yourself: the PID, the khatadar’s name, and the built-up area against the sale deed.
• On a resale, confirm the khata is still in the seller’s name, with no tax arrears outstanding.
• If it is a B-khata, ask why, and whether it is eligible for the conversion scheme – not just whether a sale is possible at all.
• In a panchayat area, check the layout has planning-authority approval before you book; since April 2025 an unapproved layout gets no new khata at all.
• File your own mutation notice if a resale has not shown up on e-Aasthi within three months of registration.
• Never treat a khata as proof of title: it is a tax record, and the registered sale deed is what makes the flat yours.