“Approved” is not one fact about a building; it is several, and each comes from a different authority depending on exactly where the land sits. A flat inside Bengaluru’s core city area is approved very differently from one in Devanahalli, Hoskote or Anekal, and a khata from a gram panchayat is not, by itself, proof that any authority approved anything.
Karnataka now runs one law for the core city (the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024), a separate development authority for its layouts and master plan (BDA), a regional authority with its own local planning authorities for the outskirts (BMRDA), a dedicated authority around the airport (BIAAPA), and, since April 2025, a tighter rule on what a gram panchayat may sign off on its own. This guide maps out who approves what, where the land is, and how to check each authority yourself before you buy.
Inside Greater Bengaluru
Inside the Greater Bengaluru area, three bodies matter, and they do different jobs. The City Corporation for the area sanctions the individual building plan, issues the plinth certificate the online approval system labels a commencement certificate, and grants the occupancy certificate once the finished building is inspected (Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, sections 239, 241 and 246). Our documents guide covers what each of these looks like and what to check on it; this guide is about which authority should have signed it.
The Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA), created by the same 2024 Act, does not itself sanction individual building plans. Its job is coordination: it supervises the City Corporations and agencies including BDA, BWSSB, BMTC and BESCOM and can issue them binding directions so their work is joined up (s.8), and it is separately tasked with the master plan and mobility plans for the area’s infrastructure (s.15) – a different document from the land-use master plan below. The OC it eventually issues matters beyond occupation too: BWSSB and BESCOM cannot give a building a permanent water or power connection without one.
BDA: layouts and the plan
The Bangalore Development Authority, under its own 1976 Act, has a narrower but older job: forming layouts – subdividing land into sites, streets and civic amenities as a “development scheme” – and, historically, publishing Bengaluru’s master plan (s.14; development schemes, ss.15–19). The plan in force is still the Revised Master Plan, 2015, approved by the state government’s order of 22 June 2007 and published under BDA’s name. It remains the operative plan: the state government finalised a fresh round of amendments to RMP-2015’s own zonal regulations on 5 January 2026, and was still proposing further ones as recently as 4 June 2026 – amendments to RMP-2015, not a replacement for it. A long-discussed Revised Master Plan 2031 has never been brought into force, so treat any reference to it as a draft, not a rule that applies.
Outside Greater Bengaluru
Past Greater Bengaluru’s boundary, the GBA and the City Corporations have no jurisdiction at all. The Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) covers the wider region, working through a set of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) that actually approve layouts and building plans in their own areas. BMRDA’s own website currently lists twelve: BDA and BIAAPA (both covered above), the Ramanagara Urban Development Authority, separate Planning Authorities for Anekal, Hoskote, Kanakapura, Magadi, Nelamangala, Channapatna and Doddaballapura, and the Greater Bengaluru Development Authority and the Satellite Town Ring Road Planning Authority. A layout approved for Hoskote means nothing for a site in Nelamangala; check the LPA that actually covers the address.
BIAAPA, near the airport
Land within reach of Kempegowda International Airport – Devanahalli, parts of Yelahanka and the villages around them – falls to the Bengaluru International Airport Area Planning Authority (BIAAPA) instead. BIAAPA runs its own local planning area map, master plan and zonal regulations, and its own procedures for land-use conversion, layout approval and building-plan scrutiny. It is a full planning authority for its area, not a rubber stamp on someone else’s approval.
The City Corporation sanctions the plan and issues the commencement and occupancy certificates; BDA forms layouts and holds the master plan (RMP 2015); GBA coordinates between them. All three sit under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024.
A Local Planning Authority – Anekal, Hoskote, Nelamangala and others – does the whole job for its own area: layout, plan sanction and its own master plan. Near the airport, BIAAPA does the same. A gram panchayat khata is never a substitute for either.
Gram panchayats and khata
A gram panchayat issues a khata – the property’s civic and tax record – and, through e-Swathu, some of the paperwork around it, but since April 2025 it cannot do that job alone for a building site. A 2025 amendment to the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act, 1993 requires the panchayat to have the jurisdictional Planning Authority’s layout-plan approval in hand before it issues any new khata or property ID for a site meant for construction – the relevant LPA’s clearance where one covers the area, or the Director of Town and Country Planning’s where none does (s.199B). An officer who issues a khata to an unlawfully formed plot anyway is now personally liable to penalty.
The same amendment lets a panchayat tax a building that exists in breach of this – unconverted land, an unapproved layout, no OC – at double the normal rate in its first year, but it is explicit that paying that tax confers no title and no right to regularise the building later (s.199C). A tax record from a panchayat, in other words, can coexist with a building nobody with the power to approve it ever did; it proves the panchayat taxed it, nothing more.
A khata records who a property belongs to, for tax purposes. It is issued by a gram panchayat, or inside Greater Bengaluru by the City Corporation, and it is not the layout approval, the building-plan sanction or the occupancy certificate. Ask for those three separately, and check which authority’s name is actually on each one. Our khata guide explains A-khata, B-khata and e-khata.
The approval sequence
Whichever authority is in charge, the approvals follow the same order, and each stage depends on the one before it. Our documents guide sets out what each document actually looks like and what it proves; here is the sequence itself, and who typically holds each stage.
Land conversion
From agricultural to non-agricultural use, under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act. Nothing else that follows makes the land fit to build housing on.
Layout or plan approval
A layout, by the planning authority for that land; a building plan, by the City Corporation, BDA, the relevant LPA or BIAAPA, whichever actually covers the address.
Commencement certificate
Construction may continue past plinth level, once a site inspection confirms the foundations follow the sanctioned plan.
Occupancy certificate
The finished building matches its plan and may be lived in – and the trigger for a permanent water and power connection. Our OC and CC guide covers that last step, and the deviations guide what happens when a building departs from its plan.
Other clearances
A few clearances sit outside the plan-and-OC sequence entirely, and apply on top of whichever authority approved the building itself.
A tall building needs its own fire clearance. Since March 2023, anyone proposing to construct a “high rise building” – 21 metres or more, whatever it is used for – must get a No Objection Certificate from the Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services department (KSFES) before building, following the National Building Code’s fire and life-safety provisions (Karnataka Fire Force Act, 1964, s.13(3)–(4), inserted in 2023). KSFES’s own published process charges ₹35 a square metre for a residential building and ₹60 for a commercial or mixed one, with a 60-working-day service standard under Sakala.
Near an airport, height is capped by a Colour Coded Zoning Map (CCZM) the Airports Authority of India (AAI) issues for the area, in grids, by distance and direction from the runway. A local planning authority can clear a building itself, up to the elevation the CCZM allows for its grid, up to a ceiling of 150 metres; above that, or wherever no CCZM covers the site, the developer needs AAI’s own height-clearance NOC, applied for online through NOCAS.
A large project needs environmental clearance. Under the EIA Notification, 2006, a building or construction project with 20,000 sq m or more of built-up area – every floor and the basement, counted together – needs clearance as a Category B2 project, applied for through the PARIVESH portal, before construction starts.
Verify it yourself, online
Every one of these approvals can be checked without taking the builder’s word for it. None of the sites below need a login for a basic search, and none of them charge a fee just to look. The one habit worth building is to check the name of the authority on the document itself against the authority that actually covers the address – the two should match exactly, not just sound close.
| Where the land is | Who approves it | Check it at |
|---|---|---|
| Inside a City Corporation (Greater Bengaluru) | The City Corporation, under the GBG Act | The corporation’s online building-plan approval system, and the project’s Karnataka RERA filing |
| A layout BDA formed or approved | Bangalore Development Authority | BDA’s own website |
| Outside Greater Bengaluru, under an LPA | The named Local Planning Authority: Anekal, Hoskote, Nelamangala and so on | That LPA’s own website |
| Near Kempegowda International Airport | BIAAPA | biaapa.tpa.gov.in |
| A gram panchayat area, no LPA covering it | Director of Town and Country Planning, via the panchayat’s khata process | e-Swathu, and the panchayat’s own record of the clearance |
| A tall building’s fire safety | KSFES | The Karnataka Fire Portal |
| Height near an airport | AAI | NOCAS |
Red flags
- “Panchayat-approved” as the only claim. A khata or a panchayat tax record is not a layout approval, a plan sanction or an OC (s.199B). Ask which planning authority actually cleared the layout and the plan.
- A plan approved by the wrong authority for that land. A layout or building plan sanctioned by a City Corporation, BDA or one LPA does not cover land that actually falls under a different authority’s jurisdiction; a sanction from a body with no power over that land is worth nothing.
- Unconverted land. A layout or building-plan approval does not convert agricultural land to non-agricultural use. Check the conversion order exists separately, and that its survey numbers match the sanctioned plan exactly.
Any of these three is more than a paperwork gap. A building with no valid plan sanction has no valid commencement or occupancy certificate behind it either, since each later approval depends on the one before it. Without an OC there is no permanent BWSSB or BESCOM connection, no route to a final khata in your name, and most banks will not lend against it. The authority named on the approval is not a formality to skim past; it is the thing that makes every later document in the chain worth anything.
Before you buy
- Find out which authority actually covers this land, before you look at any approval at all.
- Ask for the layout approval and the building-plan sanction separately, each with the issuing authority’s name on it.
- Check the commencement certificate and OC on the RERA filing or the relevant authority’s own site, not only from the builder.
- For a tall building, ask for the KSFES fire NOC; near an airport, ask for the AAI height clearance too.
- Above 20,000 sq m built up, ask for the environmental clearance.
- Treat a gram panchayat khata as a tax record, not as proof that anyone approved the building.
Sources, checked 10 Sep 2026. Plan sanction, the commencement certificate and the occupancy certificate: Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, sections 239, 241 and 246; GBA’s coordinating role and its infrastructure master plan: sections 8 and 15 (India Code). BDA’s objects and its development-scheme (layout) powers: Bangalore Development Authority Act, 1976, sections 14 to 19 (India Code). The Revised Master Plan, 2015 and its continuing amendment: Urban Development Department, Notification No. UDD 235 MNJ 2025(E), Karnataka Gazette Extraordinary, 5 Jan 2026 (Karnataka Gazette), and a further draft notification, No. UDD 338 MNJ 2026(E), of 4 Jun 2026. BMRDA’s local planning authorities (BMRDA). BIAAPA’s functions (BIAAPA). Panchayats, khata and layout approval: Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Karnataka Act 27 of 2025), sections 199B and 199C (RDPR Karnataka). The fire NOC and the 21-metre threshold: Karnataka Fire Force Act, 1964, section 13(3)–(4), inserted by the Karnataka Fire Force (Amendment) Act, 2023 (Karnataka DPAL); fees and timeline: KSFES Standard Operating Procedure (KSFES). AAI height clearance, CCZM and the 150 m local-clearance ceiling: AAI NOCAS Guidelines, under GSR 751(E) (AAI). Environmental clearance at 20,000 sq m built up: EIA Notification, 2006, as amended, Schedule item 8(a) (PARIVESH). This is a general guide, not legal advice; a lawyer should confirm which authority covers a specific site before you rely on any approval.