Land records: RTC and mutation

Long before a flat exists, the land under it is a line in a government register: a survey number, an owner’s name, and a note of what the land may be used for. In Karnataka that register is the Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops – the RTC, or pahani – and the log of changes to it is the mutation register. Together they are the revenue department’s own account of who holds a piece of land, kept separately from the registration department’s account of what has been bought and sold.

For a flat under construction, the RTC is what shows the project’s land was, until recently, farmland; whether it has actually been converted for housing; and whether the person who sold it to the developer is the same person the revenue record has always named. This guide covers the RTC’s legal basis, how to look one up yourself on the Bhoomi portal, how to read it, what a mutation actually records, four survey documents worth knowing, and what changes on the record once farmland becomes a flat. Our documents guide covers where the RTC sits among everything else you should check; this one goes further into the record itself.

What the RTC is

The Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops is a village-by-village register the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 requires the state to keep. For every survey number, it must record “the names of persons who are holders, occupants, owners, mortgagees, landlords or tenants of the land”, the nature and extent of their interest and any conditions or liabilities attaching to it, and the rent or revenue payable (section 127(1)). Most people who have seen one know it by its older name, pahani, or simply call it the RTC.

Read plainly, that is the whole point of the document: not proof of title, but the revenue department’s own running account of who holds what, and on what terms. The law gives that account some weight of its own – an entry in it “shall be presumed to be true until the contrary is proved” (section 133) – which is exactly why it is worth reading closely before you buy, and exactly why that presumption has limits, covered under the mutation register below.

One naming clash is worth knowing before you go looking. Bhoomi, the portal that issues the RTC, labels its own certified extract “Form 16” – a different, unrelated document from the Nil Encumbrance Certificate that the registration department also calls Form 16. Ask which one someone means before you act on it.

Viewing one on Bhoomi

Karnataka’s revenue department publishes current and historical land records on Bhoomi, at landrecords.karnataka.gov.in. To look up a survey number’s RTC:

1. Choose the RTC (Form 16) service from the Bhoomi home page, or its dedicated “View RTC and MR” page.
2. Pick the district, taluk, hobli and village the land sits in – the portal’s own search form asks for all four before it asks for anything else.
3. Enter the survey number, surnoc and hissa number. A surnoc is a further number the portal uses alongside a survey number; a hissa number identifies one sub-division of it.
4. Choose the period and year you want the record for – Bhoomi holds both the current RTC and past years’.
5. View or download it. A digitally signed copy – the i-RTC – is available from the same portal.

The mutation register and mutation status sit on the same portal, under their own menu items, searched the same way. A separate service, eChavadi, lets anyone register as an interested party in an ongoing mutation and receive an SMS update when it moves – the digital version of the notice the law already requires an officer to post at the village chavadi (section 129(2)).

Note the difference between the two documents this portal gives you. The RTC is the current record: who holds the land now, and on what terms. The mutation register is the log of how it got that way – every reported change, in order, with its own status. For a flat, ask for both: the RTC to see where things stand, and the mutation history to see how they got there.

Reading an RTC

An RTC is built from the particulars section 127(1) requires, but a printed extract groups them under headings. Practically, expect to find:

• Survey and hissa number, identifying exactly which parcel, or part of one, the entry is for.
• Extent, the area, usually in acres and guntas.
• The owner or occupant’s name, and the nature of their right – owner, tenant, mortgagee and so on (section 127(1)(a)).
• Liabilities: conditions or encumbrances attaching to the land (section 127(1)(b)) – a mortgage, for instance.
• Classification and crop or use, showing whether the land is recorded as agricultural, and what it is used for.

1. The office and area. District, taluk, hobli and village fix exactly which Bhoomi record you are looking at.
2. The survey number. Should match the title deeds, the conversion order and the sanctioned plan exactly.
3. The extent. The area on record; check it against the deeds and against any sub-division since.
4. The owner or holder. Should be the same name, in the same order, as the seller in your title chain.
5. Liabilities. Any mortgage or condition attaching to the land – check it against the encumbrance certificate.
6. Cultivation or use. Shows whether the land is still recorded as agricultural, or has been entered as converted.
7. The mutation number. Links this entry to its place in the mutation register – ask to see that entry too.
8. Always specimen. A real RTC carries a government watermark or digital signature; this one does not.

Match every field against the title deeds, the conversion order and the sanctioned plan. A mismatch in the survey number, the extent or the owner’s name is one of the most common reasons a lawyer stops a deal at this stage.

The mutation register

A mutation is not a change of ownership by itself; it is the department’s record of a change someone has reported. The Land Revenue Act sets out how that record is built and checked.

Anyone who acquires a right in land – by sale, gift, mortgage, inheritance, partition or otherwise – must report it to the village-level officer within three months, unless the right came through a registered document, in which case the report is unnecessary: the registering authority itself is required to notify the officer instead, once fees for the record-of-rights entry are paid alongside the usual registration fee (section 128). In practice, since land records went digital, that link runs automatically: Kaveri, the registration portal, generates the mutation notice straight from its own registration data.

Once a report or notice arrives, the officer enters it in the Register of Mutations, posts a copy at the village chavadi, and gives written notice to anyone the record shows as interested (section 129(1)-(2)). Anyone can object; objections go into a separate Register of Disputed Cases and are enquired into before the entry is certified (section 129(3)-(6)). Only once an entry is certified does it get carried across into the Record of Rights itself (section 129(7)) – a fresh mutation is a proposal until then, not yet part of the RTC.

A certified entry carries the same presumption of truth as the RTC itself (section 133). But that presumption is about the record, not about title. The Supreme Court made the distinction explicit in 2021: “mutation entry does not confer any right, title or interest in favour of the person and the mutation entry in the revenue record is only for the fiscal purpose” (Jitendra Singh v State of Madhya Pradesh, Supreme Court, 6 September 2021). A disputed mutation, in other words, is not settled by the revenue department at all – only a civil court can decide who actually owns the land (section 135, proviso).

Anyone affected by a mutation order can appeal within sixty days to the officer the state government prescribes for that purpose (section 136(2)).

Survey documents

Four more documents, all from the Department of Survey, Settlement and Land Records rather than the revenue department proper, fill in details an RTC alone does not show.

• The 11E sketch, the department’s own name for a pre-mutation survey sketch – drawn before a change to a survey number is carried into the record.
• A podi, or phodi, sketch, drawn when a survey number is formally sub-divided – the moment a larger parcel becomes the smaller numbered pieces a layout is built on.
• A tippan, a field-measurement survey document, available from the same portal as the 11E and podi sketches.
• Akarband, a separate survey-number-level record kept alongside the RTC.

None of these replaces the RTC or the encumbrance certificate. They matter most when a project’s land has recently been sub-divided from a larger holding, or converted: ask the builder for the podi sketch that created the project’s own survey numbers, and check it against the RTC and the sanctioned plan.

From farmland to your flat

A flat’s paper trail through the revenue department, from before the land was a project to after you move in, roughly follows this shape.

After registration, the flat itself moves into a different record: the khata, not the RTC. Our guide to A-khata, B-khata and e-khata covers what happens next.

What to check

Before you rely on a project’s RTC:

• The owner matches your title chain. The name on the current RTC, and on every mutation that led to it, should match the sequence of owners in the sale deeds – the same test an encumbrance certificate applies, from a different record.
• No undisclosed liabilities. Anything in the liabilities column that is not explained by documents you have already seen is worth asking about directly.
• The classification matches what you were told. If a project is meant to be fully converted for housing, the RTC’s classification and use should say so, not still read as agricultural.
• Survey and hissa numbers match everywhere else: the title deeds, the conversion order, the podi sketch and the sanctioned plan.

Some entries need more than a careful read. Land recorded as government, inam or granted land, or as held under a tenancy protected by separate legislation, carries restrictions an ordinary RTC entry will not spell out in full – have a lawyer check the classification itself before you rely on anything built on it.

Before you buy

• Look up the RTC yourself on Bhoomi, against the exact survey and hissa numbers the builder gives you.
• Check the owner’s name against every step in the title chain, not just the latest one.
• Read the liabilities column, and ask about anything it does not explain.
• Ask for the mutation history, not just the current RTC – a clean-looking entry can still sit on a disputed mutation.
• Get the podi sketch where the project’s numbers came from a larger, sub-divided survey number.
• Remember the limit: a presumption of truth is not proof of title. A real dispute is settled in a civil court, not on the revenue record.