Before a flat can be built, the land under it has to pass two separate tests. The first is whether it may be used for housing at all: farmland stays farmland until it is formally converted. The second is harder to fix after the fact – whether the land is free to be sold in the first place. Karnataka law treats several categories of land as belonging to someone other than whoever is holding it out for sale: a Scheduled Caste or Tribe grantee, a village’s cattle, the state itself, or the forest department. Buy into one of these and no amount of paperwork on the building fixes the problem, because the flaw is in the land, not the construction.
This guide covers both tests. It starts with land-use conversion under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act – what it proves, how the process works since it was simplified in 2023, and what a converted plot lets you do that an unconverted one does not. It then takes each risky land type in turn: what it is, the law behind it, how to spot it in the records, and what buying it actually costs you if it goes wrong.
None of this replaces a lawyer’s title search. What it gives you is the vocabulary and the checks to ask the right questions before you sign anything, and to recognise an answer that does not add up.
What DC conversion proves
Agricultural land cannot be used for housing until it is diverted to a non-agricultural purpose under section 95 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964. Because the Deputy Commissioner (DC) grants this permission, it is usually called “DC conversion” on the ground, and the order itself is what a builder or a seller should be able to show you. It does not certify that the title is clean, that the land is free of a grant restriction, or that a building plan will be approved – only that this survey number may now be used for something other than farming.
The section was rewritten by the Karnataka Land Revenue (Second Amendment) Act, 2022 (Karnataka Act 2 of 2023, in force from 12 Jan 2023), which the Act’s own statement of objects says was done “to simplify the land conversion process for the non-agricultural purpose.” Before the change, an occupant applied to the DC, who could refuse or attach conditions, with a deemed grant only after four months of silence. Since the rewrite, the process runs on a much shorter clock, and much of it depends on whether the intended use matches a published master plan.
Application and affidavit
The occupant applies to the Deputy Commissioner with an affidavit stating the intended use, rather than the older plain application.
Checked against the master plan
Where the land falls inside a local planning area with a published master plan and the intended use matches it, the diversion is treated as granted on payment of the prescribed fee, and the DC must issue the order within seven days.
No master plan, or outside one
Where there is no published master plan, or the land sits outside a local planning area, the relevant authorities have fifteen days to object; silence counts as no objection, and the DC has thirty days to decide before the grant is deemed to have happened anyway.
A sketch for part of a plot
Converting only part of a survey number needs a pre-conversion sketch from the Survey Settlement and Land Records Department first, marking the metes and bounds of the part being converted.
The order, and the RTC entry
The conversion order is issued and the RTC is updated to show it. A false affidavit voids the conversion, forfeits the fee, and can lead to the land itself being forfeited to the government.
One consequence of the 2023 rewrite is worth knowing before you negotiate a price: conversion by itself does not raise the land’s guidance value. The Act says an order of diversion “shall by itself lead to increase in the guidance value” only once the land is put to actual non-agricultural use, not on the date of the order. A seller who quotes a post-conversion, near-guidance-value price for land that has not yet been built on is pricing ahead of what the law itself recognises. Our guide to guidance value versus market value covers how that figure is set and looked up.
Converted versus unconverted
The gap between the two is not cosmetic. It decides whether the land can be built on, financed and registered as housing at all.
A sanctioned building plan, a home loan against the flat, RERA registration and, eventually, a khata all depend on this order existing first. Without it, nothing later in the chain is valid, whatever else has been approved.
A sale deed can still be registered, but the buyer receives farmland, not a building plot. Most banks will not lend against it for a home, no building plan can be sanctioned, and converting it afterwards is the buyer’s problem, not the seller’s.
Ask to see the conversion order itself, not just a mention of it in a brochure, and check that its survey and hissa numbers, the extent, and the permitted use match the RTC and the title deeds exactly. Our documents guide covers this check, and the rest of the title chain, in full.
Granted land: PTCL and inam
Two categories of Karnataka land carry restrictions that trace back to how the state originally gave the land away, rather than to how it is currently used. The table below maps all eight risky types at a glance; this section and the next two take the most consequential in turn.
| Land type | What it is | The law | How to spot it | The risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PTCL / granted land | Land the government granted to an SC/ST person, later sold on | Karnataka PTCL Act, 1978, s.4 | A grant entry in the RTC or mutation register | Sale void from the start; no time limit since 2023 |
| Inam land | A hereditary revenue grant, abolished by statute | Karnataka Certain Inams Abolition Act, 1977, ss.4–5 | “Inam” in the RTC tenure column, or a listed inam village | Seller’s own title may have ended at abolition |
| Gomala land | Government land set aside for free village grazing | Land Revenue Act, 1964, ss.71–72 | RTC land-use column marked gomal or pasture; no individual khata | Encroachment reversed by court order, however old |
| B-kharab land | Uncultivable land reserved for a public use | Land Revenue Rules, 1966, Rule 21(2)(b) | RTC kharab column marked “B”, not “A” | Belongs to government, whatever the RTC once showed |
| Government land | Land with no proven private owner | Land Revenue Act, 1964, s.67 | No name in the RTC ownership column; a gap in the mutation chain | Long possession does not create title; summary eviction |
| Lake and tank beds | The bed and no-build buffer of a lake or storm drain | Land Revenue Act, s.67(1); tank conservation law | Survey map against the sanctioned plan (see documents guide) | Nothing built in a buffer has a valid approval |
| Forest land | Reserved or protected forest, or any land recorded as forest | Karnataka Forest Act, 1963; Godavarman (SC, 1996) | A forest-department NOC; a forest entry on the revenue map | Central clearance needed even on privately held land |
| Under acquisition | Land notified for a road, layout or industrial area | BDA Act, s.36; KIADB Act, s.30 | The survey number against BDA/KIADB’s own notifications | Compensation, not a private sale, is the real entitlement |
PTCL land: granted, not sold outright
Under the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) Act, 1978, “granted land” is land the government gave to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe person, including land allotted under agrarian reform, land-ceiling or inam-abolition laws. Section 4 makes any transfer of such land “in contravention of the terms of the grant”, or without the government’s prior permission, null and void – and says no right, title or interest is ever conveyed by it, whoever buys it and however many times it changes hands afterwards. Section 5 lets the Assistant Commissioner take the land back and restore it to the original grantee or their heir, or, failing that, to the government itself – not to whoever paid for it last. Where land is held by someone other than the original grantee, the Act presumes the transfer was void unless proven otherwise, which puts the burden of proof on the current holder, not the state.
An amendment in 2023 removed the one real limit on this risk. Karnataka Act 30 of 2023 added a clause to section 5 stating that “notwithstanding anything contained in any law, there shall be no limitation of time to invoke the provisions of this Act,” and applied that retrospectively to cases already pending. Before 2023, a very old transfer had at least an argument that too much time had passed; since 27 Jul 2023, it does not. A PTCL claim can surface decades after a sale that looked, on paper, entirely ordinary.
Take an illustrative ₹80 lakh resale flat on land that turns out to be granted land, sold on by an heir who was never the original grantee. Under section 4, that sale is void: it conveys nothing, whatever price was paid. Stamp duty, cess, surcharge and the registration fee on the purchase – about 7.6% in city limits – come to a further ₹6.08 lakh (80,00,000 × 0.076). The buyer’s total exposure is ₹86.08 lakh, and none of it is recoverable from the state: section 5 restores the land to the original grantee, or to the government, not to the buyer. Whatever can be recovered has to come from a private claim against the seller, who may by then be untraceable or have nothing left to pay with.
Inam land: the grant that was abolished
An inam was a hereditary grant of land, or of its revenue, made by a former ruler or the state, usually with full or partial exemption from land revenue. Karnataka abolished inam tenure by statute: under the Karnataka Certain Inams Abolition Act, 1977, from the appointed date “all rights, title and interest vesting in the inamdar” – including in the land itself – “cease and be vested absolutely in the State Government, free from all encumbrances.” The inamdar’s heirs do not inherit the land; instead, whoever was actually farming it as the inamdar’s tenant immediately before 1 Mar 1974 was entitled to be registered as its occupant. (Karnataka has more than one inams-abolition Act for different categories of grant; the vesting mechanism is the same across them.)
The practical risk is that a seller tracing their title back to “the inamdar” or the inamdar’s family may be selling a right that ended at abolition. This shows up most often around old inam villages on Bengaluru’s outskirts, frequently linked to a temple or mutt grant, where the paperwork looks continuous but the legal chain was actually broken by the 1977 Act. Check whether the RTC or the village records describe the land as an inam grant, and if they do, ask specifically how the seller’s title survived abolition – a question a general title search can miss if it starts from the current sale deed and works backwards only a few transactions.
Land the state already owns
Three more risky categories share a single idea: Karnataka law puts the burden of proof on whoever claims to own the land, not on the state. Left unproven, the default owner is the government.
Gomala: village grazing land
Sections 71 and 72 of the Land Revenue Act let the Deputy Commissioner set apart government land “for free pasturage for the village cattle, for forest reserves or for any other public purpose,” and confine the grazing right to the cattle of the villages it was assigned to. This is what is meant on the ground by gomala (also gomal or gochar) land: government-owned common land, not anyone’s private holding, however long a fence around part of it has stood.
The Supreme Court addressed exactly this pattern in Jagpal Singh & Ors v State of Punjab & Ors (2011), a case about a village pond filled in and built on. The Court held that common village lands – it listed “gram sabha/gram panchayat land, poramboke, shamlat deh” and similar categories under different regional names – are “generally treated as inalienable in order that their status as community land be preserved,” quoting its own earlier ruling that vesting such land in the government does not extinguish the community’s rights over it. It directed every state to devise schemes for evicting unauthorised occupants of such land. Long-standing construction on gomala land is not a reason courts treat it as settled; it is usually the reason a case gets filed.
B-kharab: the government’s own share
Not every uncultivable patch inside a survey number is a problem. Rule 21(2) of the Karnataka Land Revenue Rules, 1966 splits “kharab” (uncultivable) land into two classes, as the Karnataka High Court set out in Linganagouda v The General Manager, Upper Krishna Project (2023), quoting its own earlier Division Bench ruling: land under Rule 21(2)(a) “is not a Government land, it belong[s] to the ownership of the [landholder]”, while land under Rule 21(2)(b) “belongs to the Government” because it is reserved for a public use – a road, footpath, tank, stream, burial ground or similar. The Court was clear that the two should never be assumed to be the same: “Every Pot kharab land does not belong to Government,” and an acquiring or land-owning authority cannot simply treat all of it as state land without checking which sub-clause applies.
For a buyer, the practical version of this is narrower: check whether the RTC marks any part of the survey number “B” kharab. If it does, that portion is the government’s, regardless of what the total extent on the sale deed suggests you are buying.
Encroaching on government land
Section 67 of the Land Revenue Act sets the default the other two categories both rest on: roads, tanks, lakes, riverbeds and “all lands wherever situated which are not the property of individuals or of aggregate[s] of persons legally capable of holding property” belong to the state. Where the state or a private party disputes ownership, section 67(2) lets the Deputy Commissioner decide the claim after a formal inquiry, appealable to a civil court within one year. Occupying government land without permission carries its own penalty under section 94 – twice the ordinary assessment for every year of unauthorised occupation, plus a fine at the Deputy Commissioner’s discretion – and section 104 lets the Tahsildar summarily evict the occupant and forfeit or remove any building on the land.
The common thread across gomala, B-kharab and plain government land is the same: an RTC that has always shown an individual’s name is worth far less than usual if that name was never actually entered against a converted, privately held survey number in the first place. Ask specifically whether the RTC shows continuous private ownership, or only continuous occupation.
Lakes, drains and forest land
Two more categories restrict what may be built even where the underlying ownership is not in doubt.
Lake and tank beds fall within the same section 67 default: the beds of rivers, streams and tanks are declared government property by the same clause that covers roads and unclaimed land. Building anywhere inside the no-build buffer around a lake or a storm drain is never validly approved, whoever holds the survey number it sits on. Our documents guide’s lakes and storm drains section sets out the current buffer distances and how to check a specific site against them; this guide does not repeat that detail.
Forest land is the widest of the eight categories, because it does not depend on a notification existing at all. The Karnataka Forest Act, 1963 lets the state declare reserved and protected forests by notification, but the Supreme Court’s order in T.N. Godavarman Thirumulkpad v Union of India (1996) went further for the whole country. It held that the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 “must apply to all forests irrespective of the nature of ownership or classification,” and that “forest land” in that Act “will not only include ‘forest’ as understood in the dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the Government record irrespective of the ownership.” A plot that looks like ordinary scrub, and is entirely privately held on paper, can still be legally forest land if any government record anywhere describes it that way – which means a Central government clearance, not just a Karnataka conversion order, may be needed before it can be built on at all. Ask whether a forest-department no-objection certificate exists, and treat “it is privately owned, so it cannot be forest land” as a wrong answer.
Land already being acquired
The Bangalore Development Authority and the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) can both notify land for compulsory acquisition – for a layout, an arterial road or an industrial area – under their own Acts. Once land is notified, the person selling it to you is not really offering land at all; they are offering a claim to compensation, which is a different asset with a different, and often much lower, value. KIADB acquisitions now run on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which a 2022 amendment to the KIADB Act expressly wrote into its own acquisition chapter in place of the older 1894 Act.
Acquisition notifications are published in the Karnataka Gazette by survey number, and BDA and KIADB both maintain their own records of notified land. Before paying, ask your lawyer to check the site’s survey number against these notifications directly, rather than relying on an RTC or khata that predates the notification – an old, clean-looking record does not mean a more recent acquisition notice does not exist.
Red flags
- An RTC remarks column mentioning a grant, an inam, or the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act.
- “A” or “B” kharab noted against any part of the survey number, without an explanation of which part you are actually buying.
- A gap in the mutation register, or an RTC that shows occupation rather than a chain of registered owners.
- A price pitched at, or close to, guidance value for land converted but not yet built on.
- A seller who cannot produce the conversion order itself, only a mention of conversion in a brochure.
- Land near a lake, tank, drain or forest boundary with no clearance offered unprompted.
- Reluctance to have your lawyer check the survey number against BDA or KIADB’s own acquisition notifications.
- A title search that starts at the current sale deed and does not trace back through conversion, abolition or grant records.
Before you buy
- Get the conversion order itself, and check its survey number, extent and permitted use against the RTC and title deeds.
- Read the RTC’s tenure and remarks columns, not just the ownership column, for any grant, inam or kharab entry.
- Ask what “kharab” means for this plot specifically: A, which can be private, or B, which cannot.
- Check the survey number against BDA and KIADB’s published acquisition notifications, not just the seller’s paperwork.
- Ask for a forest-department clearance if the land is anywhere near a forest boundary, whatever the title deed says about ownership.
- Have a lawyer trace the title back through conversion, abolition and grant records, not only through recent sale deeds.
Sources, checked 10 Sep 2026. Land conversion: Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964, section 95, as substituted by the Karnataka Land Revenue (Second Amendment) Act, 2022 (Karnataka Act 2 of 2023) (dpal.karnataka.gov.in). PTCL land: Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) Act, 1978 (Karnataka Act 2 of 1979), sections 4 and 5, and the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) (Amendment) Act, 2023 (Karnataka Act 30 of 2023). Inam land: Karnataka Certain Inams Abolition Act, 1977 (Karnataka Act 10 of 1978), sections 3 to 5. Gomala land: Karnataka Land Revenue Act, sections 71 and 72, and Jagpal Singh & Ors v State of Punjab & Ors (Supreme Court, 28 Jan 2011). B-kharab: Karnataka Land Revenue Rules, 1966, Rule 21(2), as construed in Linganagouda/O. Neelappagouda & Ors v The General Manager, Upper Krishna Project (Karnataka High Court, 7 Mar 2023). Government land: Karnataka Land Revenue Act, sections 67, 94 and 104. Forest land: Karnataka Forest Act, 1963, and T.N. Godavarman Thirumulkpad v Union of India (Supreme Court, order of 12 Dec 1996). Land under acquisition: Bangalore Development Authority Act, 1976, section 36, and Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Act, 1966, section 30, as substituted by the Karnataka Industrial Area Development (Amendment) Act, 2022 (Karnataka Act 20 of 2022). This is a general guide, not legal advice; a lawyer’s own title search on the specific survey number is what a purchase should actually rely on.