Document Explainer
The short version
- Mother deed — where ownership began. The starting point of the chain.
- Sale deed — how the current owner got it. The most recent link.
- Encumbrance certificate — what has been registered against the property. Not a clean bill of health.
- Khata — the municipal tax record. Proves who pays tax, not who owns.
- No single document proves ownership. They only mean something read against each other.
Not sure what your documents actually say?
Share them with us and we’ll walk you through what each one establishes — and what it doesn’t.
Property paperwork in Karnataka is a stack of documents that each answer a different question. Buyers get into trouble not because a document is fake, but because they assume one document proves something it was never designed to prove.
Here is what each one actually establishes — and, more usefully, what it does not.
Mother deed
The mother deed — sometimes called the parent document — is the earliest available deed in a property’s recorded history. It is where the chain of ownership begins.
What it establishes: the origin of title. Who first held this property in the recorded sequence, and how.
What it does not establish: anything about the present. A mother deed from 1978 tells you nothing about whether the person selling to you today has any right to do so. It is the first link, not the whole chain.
What to look at: whether the property described — boundaries, measurements, survey number — reconciles with the property in later deeds. Descriptions drift over decades as land is subdivided, and a description that cannot be reconciled is the most common cause of a broken chain.
If the seller cannot produce the mother deed, that is not automatically fatal — certified copies can often be obtained from the sub-registrar. But it does mean the chain has to be reconstructed from records rather than read from documents in hand, which takes longer.
Sale deed
The registered instrument by which the current owner acquired the property. In a resale transaction, this is the document you will be examining most closely, and a new one will be executed in your favour at registration.
What it establishes: that a transfer took place, on a particular date, between named parties, for a stated consideration, and that it was registered.
What it does not establish: that the person who sold it had good title to sell. A registered sale deed from someone with defective ownership transfers defective ownership. Registration confirms the transaction happened; it does not validate the seller’s right.
What to look at: the seller’s name exactly as it appears elsewhere, the mode of acquisition, whether all necessary parties signed, and the schedule of property at the end — that schedule is the legal description, and it is what must match everything else.
Encumbrance certificate
The most requested and most misunderstood document in Karnataka property transactions. An EC is a extract from the sub-registrar’s index showing transactions registered against a property over a requested period.
What it establishes: registered transactions — sales, gifts, mortgages, releases, court attachments — within the period searched.
What it does not establish: that the property is free of claims. An EC only reflects what was registered. Unregistered agreements to sell, oral family arrangements, tenancy claims, pending litigation that never touched the registry, and disputes among heirs will not appear. A clear EC is necessary but nowhere near sufficient.
What to look at:
- The period covered. Ask for 30 years. Sellers often produce a two- or three-year extract, which conveniently omits the history you need.
- Mortgage entries without a matching release. The single most common finding. The loan was repaid; the release was never registered; the charge still sits on record and will surface at your resale.
- Gaps in the sequence. A transfer appearing with no prior entry explaining how the transferor acquired it.
- Nil EC. An EC showing no entries at all can mean a genuinely untransacted property — or that the search was run against the wrong survey number. Verify which.
Khata: A and B
A khata is a municipal record. It identifies the property for property-tax purposes and records the name of the person liable to pay.
What it establishes: that the municipality recognises the property and knows who pays tax on it.
What it does not establish: ownership. This is the most consequential misunderstanding in the whole set. A khata in someone’s name is not proof they own the property, and a khata in the wrong name does not mean the true owner has lost anything. It is an administrative record, not a title document.
| A khata | B khata | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Property is on the main municipal register and meets requirements | Recorded for tax collection, but the property does not meet all requirements |
| Usual cause | — | Missing conversion order, unapproved layout, or deviation from sanctioned plan |
| Home loans | Generally available | Most major lenders decline |
| Building approval | Available | Difficult to obtain |
| Resale | Full buyer pool | Smaller pool, largely cash buyers |
B khata property is not worthless and buying it is not automatically a mistake. It trades at a discount that can be rational if you are buying to hold and use. The failure is discovering the status after registration rather than pricing it in before.
Got a B khata property in front of you?
We can explain what caused the classification and whether it can be regularised.
How they fit together
Read in isolation, each document is close to meaningless. Read against each other, they either corroborate a coherent story or they do not.
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Start at the mother deed
Establish the property’s description and the first recorded owner. Everything downstream is measured against this.
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Follow every transfer forward
Each transfer must have a document. Each document must describe the same property. A transfer with no supporting deed is a break in the chain, and the chain is only as good as its weakest link.
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Cross-check against the encumbrance certificate
Every transfer in the chain should appear on the EC, and every EC entry should be explained by a document in the chain. Entries on one side without a match on the other are what you are looking for.
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Confirm the khata and tax position
The khata should stand in the current owner’s name and tax should be paid to date. Where it does not, find out why — an untransferred khata after an inheritance often signals an unresolved position among heirs.
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Check permitted use
Conversion order for non-agricultural use, approved layout for a plot, sanctioned plan and occupancy certificate for a building.
Where it goes wrong
- Treating the khata as proof of ownership. It is a tax record. Brokers describe it as “the ownership document” constantly, and it is not.
- Accepting a short-period EC. Three years of history on a forty-year-old property tells you almost nothing.
- Assuming registration validates title. Registration records that a transaction occurred. It does not confirm the seller had the right to transact.
- Reading the seller’s deed and stopping there. Their deed can be flawless while the deed two owners back is missing.
- Ignoring a description mismatch. When the boundaries in a 1990 deed do not reconcile with a 2020 deed, that is a real problem, not a clerical quirk.
- Trusting a bank NOC as a mortgage release. A letter from the bank is not the same as a registered release. Only the registered release clears the record.
Common questions
Can I get an encumbrance certificate myself?
Yes. ECs can be applied for through the Karnataka government’s online services or at the sub-registrar’s office. You will need the survey number or property details and the period you want covered. Request 30 years rather than accepting a default shorter period.
What if the khata is still in a deceased owner’s name?
It means the khata transfer was never completed after the death. That is administratively fixable, but the underlying question matters more: has the property actually devolved cleanly to the person now selling, and have all heirs been accounted for? The untransferred khata is a symptom worth tracing back.
Can B khata be converted to A khata?
It depends entirely on what caused the B khata classification, and on regularisation schemes that have opened and closed over the years. A missing conversion order is a different problem from a plan deviation. This is worth establishing before purchase rather than after, because the answer determines whether the discount you are getting is fair.
How far back does a proper chain examination go?
Thirty years is standard and is what lenders generally require. Where an inheritance or partition falls inside that window, the search usually needs to extend past the event to establish how the interest arose.
The property is in a gram panchayat area. Does khata work the same way?
No. Panchayat records serve a similar administrative function but sit outside the municipal khata system, and properties later absorbed into city limits often carry inconsistencies from the transition. These need examining on their own terms rather than being read as an A or B khata equivalent.
Questions about your paperwork?
We read the whole set — mother deed through khata — and explain what it actually means. Bengaluru and across Karnataka.
Rightium provides property document verification and due diligence reports. This article explains these documents in general terms and is not a substitute for a verification report on your specific property. Requirements and record-keeping practices vary by district.