What is jamabandi?
Also called: fard, nakal jamabandi, record of rights Haryana, jamabandi Punjab
Jamabandi is the record of rights for land in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir. It names the owner and the cultivator of each khasra or killa, their shares, and any mortgage on the land.
In Haryana and Punjab the patwari rewrites the jamabandi roughly every five years. Changes that happen in between, a sale, an inheritance, a bank charge, are entered as mutations (intkal) and carried into the next jamabandi. So when you pull a copy, check which year it's for and then look at the mutations recorded after it. A jamabandi for 2021-22 alone won't tell you about a sale in 2024.
The document has separate columns for the owner (malik) and the cultivator (kashtkar). They're often different people, and a long-standing tenant or occupier can complicate a sale. Shares are written as fractions of the khewat, the ownership holding, so a seller may own "1/6 hissa" rather than a clean plot. The land itself is described by mustatil (rectangle) and killa number, with area in kanal and marla.
Haryana's records are on jamabandi.nic.in, where you can view the jamabandi, the mutation list and the cadastral map by district, tehsil and village. Punjab has its own portal under the Punjab Land Records Society, Himachal uses Himbhoomi, and in Rajasthan the jamabandi copy comes up on Apna Khata. A copy stamped by the patwari, commonly called the fard, is what banks and the registration office ask for.
In the Gurugram and Sonipat belt this matters even for people buying "plots" in farmhouse or low-density schemes, because those parcels are usually still agricultural land held as undivided shares. The jamabandi will show the buyer as a co-owner of a much larger khewat, not as the owner of a marked plot.
A buyer in Sohna tehsil pays ₹1.4 crore for "2 kanal" of land. The jamabandi shows the seller holds 16/320 share in a khewat of 40 kanal, which works out to exactly 2 kanal, but no partition has been done, so the buyer gets a share of the whole khewat rather than a demarcated field.
Relying on an old fard. Always ask for the latest jamabandi plus the list of mutations entered after it, because pending intkals and bank mortgages only show up there.
Questions people ask about jamabandi
What is the difference between fard and jamabandi?
Jamabandi is the register itself. A fard is a certified copy of the relevant entries, issued by the patwari or a Fard Kendra, and that copy is what you submit to a bank or registry office.
How many marla make a kanal in Haryana?
20 marla make one kanal, and 8 kanal make one acre (one killa is usually one acre). Use an area converter before comparing prices quoted in different units.