Reading a land title before you fall in love with the land
Mother deed, encumbrance certificate, conversion order, khata. The four documents that decide whether you are buying an asset or a decade of litigation.
Almost every land dispute we have seen in Karnataka was visible in the paperwork before the money moved. The buyer simply did not know which page to turn to — or was moving too fast to look.
Start with the mother deed and trace the chain of title backwards for at least thirty years. Every transfer in that chain should be registered, and every seller in it should have had the right to sell. A break in the chain is not a formality to be regularised later; it is the defect that surfaces the day you try to exit.
Then pull the encumbrance certificate for the same period. The EC tells you what has been registered against the property — mortgages, court attachments, prior agreements. It does not tell you about unregistered claims, which is exactly why the physical verification matters as much as the paperwork.
For agricultural land being sold as residential, the DC conversion order is the document that changes what the land legally is. Without it, no amount of layout marketing makes the plot a plot. Ask for the order number and verify it at source.
Finally, the khata and the tax paid receipts should be in the seller's name and current. An A-khata property is financeable and transferable; a B-khata or an e-khata mismatch is a negotiating point at best and a dead end at worst.
None of this is exotic. It is a checklist, and it takes a fortnight. The only expensive version of this process is the one you skip.
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