Land area converter

Why a bigha isn't the same everywhere

A bigha in Lucknow and a bigha in Kolkata are not the same piece of land. The first is about 27,225 sq ft, the second 14,400 sq ft, and one in Shimla is only 8,712 sq ft. The same is true of the katha, which is 720 sq ft in West Bengal and 1,361.25 sq ft around Patna, and of the biswa, which is simply one twentieth of whatever the local bigha happens to be.

The reason is history. These units came from local revenue practice, often from the length of a measuring rod or chain that differed from one princely state or district to the next. The British settlement surveys fixed values region by region rather than nationally, and many of those values survived independence. Punjab and Haryana standardised their marla and kanal during land consolidation, which is why a marla there is 272.25 sq ft in revenue records. Other units were never harmonised, and even within Bihar or western Uttar Pradesh the bigha can change between neighbouring districts.

Metric and imperial units, the square metre, square foot, acre and hectare, have fixed definitions and cause no confusion. Regional units need care. A seller quoting a price per bigha may have a different bigha in mind from the buyer, and a mismatch of a few thousand square feet on a large parcel is a serious sum of money.

Before paying an advance, check the area on the sale deed and in the land record (khatauni, jamabandi, record of rights or 7/12 extract, depending on the state) and see which unit it uses. If the deed gives only a local unit, ask the tehsil or revenue office for the conversion used in that village, and have the area written in square metres or square feet as well. Stamp duty and circle rates are calculated on the recorded area, so the figure on the deed is the one that counts.