Patta, Chitta and the EC: Checking Land Title in Tamil Nadu

Land in Tamil Nadu is never just land. It is a survey number, a subdivision, a classification, a name in a revenue register and a chain of sale deeds that can run back further than anybody in the family remembers. Buy the land without reading the chain and you have bought a story you have not heard the end of.

The good news is that most of the story is now online. The less good news is that reading it takes patience, and a few words that sound like they belong in a village office in 1952. They do. That is precisely why they matter.

This note walks through the documents we check on every plot and every apartment before a deal moves past our legal stage. It is not a substitute for a lawyer's opinion. It is the list that tells you whether you need one urgently.

Why does land need so much paper?

Because the state keeps two separate records about the same piece of ground, and they do different jobs.

The registration department records transactions. Every registered sale, mortgage, gift, settlement and partition goes through a Sub-Registrar's office, and that is where the encumbrance certificate comes from.

The revenue department records ownership and classification. Who the land stands in the name of, how big it is, what kind of land it is, and how it sits on the village map. That is where the patta, the chitta, the A-register and the FMB sketch come from.

When the two records agree, you are on firm ground. When they disagree, you are about to learn something important.

The patta

The patta is the revenue record of ownership. It names the owner or owners, the district, taluk and village, the survey number and subdivision, the extent of the land, and its classification. It is issued through the Tahsildar's office and can be viewed and verified online on the Tamil Nadu government's e-services portal.

What to check: that the name on the patta matches the seller, that the survey number and subdivision match the sale deed exactly, and that the extent is at least what you are being sold. A patta still in the name of the seller's late grandfather is not unusual, but it means the transfer to the current owner has not been recorded in the revenue books, and that has to be resolved before you buy, not after.

In parts of Chennai surveyed under the town survey, the same information sits in the Town Survey Land Register against a town survey number. Different register, same question: whose name is on it?

The chitta, the A-register and the FMB

The chitta was historically a separate register kept by the Village Administrative Officer, recording the ownership, extent and type of land – wet land, which is nanjai, or dry land, which is punjai. Tamil Nadu has since merged the patta and chitta into a single extract, which is why many people now use the two words interchangeably.

The A-register, or adangal, is the basic village land register. It records the classification and tenure of each survey number, and it is where you would see that a piece of land is government land, a water body or a road margin rather than private property. The word to watch for is poramboke: land the state holds for common use, such as a tank bed or a channel. Nobody can sell you poramboke, however good the price.

The FMB sketch, from the Field Measurement Book, is the drawing of the survey field with its boundaries and dimensions. Lay it next to the layout plan and the sale deed. If the plot you walked on does not fit inside the shape on the FMB, the survey stones are going to have an opinion about it.

The encumbrance certificate

The encumbrance certificate, or EC, lists every registered transaction on a property over the period you ask for. Sales, mortgages, releases, gifts, partitions, court attachments that were registered. It is available online through TNREGINET, the registration department's portal, and the online search covers decades of records.

How many years? Ask for thirty at the very least. The search should cover every survey number and subdivision involved, and every name in the chain.

What to look for: an unbroken sequence of owners leading to your seller; any mortgage, and whether a release of that mortgage was also registered; any transaction you cannot explain from the documents you have been shown.

And here is the catch that surprises most first-time buyers. An EC only shows registered transactions. A mortgage created by depositing the original title deeds with a lender does not have to be registered, so it may not appear at all. An unregistered agreement to sell will not appear. A pending civil suit may not appear. A clean EC is necessary. It is not sufficient.

The parent documents and the link documents

The parent document, sometimes called the mother deed, is the earliest title document in the chain you are relying on. The link documents are every deed between that one and the seller's. Together they should explain, without gaps, how the land travelled from its first recorded owner to the person now selling it.

Read the chain the way an auditor reads accounts. Every transfer should have a deed. Every deed should be registered. Every name should match the next one. Where the chain passes through an inheritance, there should be a legal heir certificate, a registered partition or settlement among the heirs, or a will. Where a will is involved within the city limits that fall under the Madras High Court's original jurisdiction, it generally needs probate before the property can pass cleanly.

A land record in Tamil Nadu is something of a palimpsest: each owner writes over the last, and the earlier entries never quite disappear. Your job is to read every layer.

Take a hypothetical buyer, Lakshmi, looking at a plot near Chengalpattu. The seller's sale deed is from 2014 and is perfectly in order. The EC for thirty years shows that sale, and one before it in 2002. But the 2002 seller inherited the land from his father, and nobody can produce the legal heir certificate, or any document showing that his two sisters released their share. The 2014 deed is clean. The title is not. That is the kind of gap a thirty-year search finds and a three-year search never will.

Power of attorney sales

A word on a practice that refuses to die. For years, some properties changed hands through a general power of attorney, an agreement to sell and a will, rather than a registered sale deed, to save on stamp duty. The Supreme Court has made it clear that such arrangements do not transfer title. If a link in your chain is a power of attorney sale, that link needs to be regularized with a proper registered deed before you rely on it.

Powers of attorney themselves are legitimate, and NRI sellers use them all the time. The point is to check that the power exists, that it was properly executed and registered, that it covers this property and this sale, and that the person who gave it is alive and has not revoked it. We cover the NRI side of this in NRI paperwork for property in Chennai.

Approvals: CMDA, DTCP and the panchayat trap

Title tells you who owns the land. Approval tells you what can lawfully be done with it.

Within the Chennai Metropolitan Area, layouts and buildings are approved by CMDA, or by the local body under powers delegated by it. Outside it, layouts are approved by DTCP. An approved layout has an approval number, an approved plan showing roads, open space reservation and plot boundaries, and in most cases a gift deed handing the roads and open spaces over to the local body.

The phrase to be wary of is "panchayat approved". A village panchayat does not have the power to approve a layout. A plot sold on that basis is a plot in an unapproved layout, whatever the brochure calls it.

Tamil Nadu ran a regularization scheme for plots in unapproved layouts that were registered before a cut-off date in October 2016. A plot regularized under it is a different proposition from one that was never regularized. Ask for the regularization order, and check it against the plot number.

For apartments, the questions are the same but the documents change: the approved building plan, the planning permission, and once the building is finished, the completion certificate. And for a project of any size, the TNRERA registration, which has its own note.

Guideline value and what you pay on it

The government publishes a guideline value for land in every street and survey number, also on TNREGINET. Stamp duty in Tamil Nadu is charged at 7 per cent, plus a registration fee, on the higher of the guideline value and the price in the deed. Check the current registration fee on the portal before you budget; it has changed more than once in recent years.

A price far below the guideline value is a question. A price far above it is also a question, of a different kind.

Red flags worth walking away from

Most problems announce themselves early, if you are listening. A few signs that should slow any purchase to a crawl:

A seller who can only show photocopies, and keeps the originals "with a relative".

A patta in somebody else's name, with an assurance that it "will be transferred after registration".

A survey number on the sale deed that does not match the one on the patta or the FMB, even by a single subdivision.

A plot in a layout described as "DTCP approval applied for", or approved by a body that cannot approve layouts.

Land next to, or suspiciously level with, a tank, a channel or a stretch of ground that floods every year.

A price well below everything else on the street, paired with a seller in a hurry.

None of these is proof of fraud. Every one of them is a reason to read the file twice and to put your lawyer's opinion between you and the payment.

After you buy

Two things people forget. First, apply to transfer the patta into your own name, which can now be done online. Until you do, the revenue records still name the seller, and the next buyer's lawyer will ask you the same question you asked. Second, keep the original documents together, in order, with a copy of every EC you pulled. You are now a link in somebody else's chain.

The checklist

Patta or TSLR extract in the seller's name, matching the survey number, subdivision and extent.

A-register and FMB sketch, with the land classified as something that can be privately owned and built on.

EC for at least thirty years across every survey number and name involved.

The parent document and every link document, registered, with no gaps.

Legal heir certificate, partition or settlement, or a probated will wherever the chain passes through an inheritance.

Layout approval from CMDA or DTCP, or a regularization order, for any plot.

Building plan approval and completion certificate for any apartment.

A lawyer's title opinion, in writing, before the final payment.

Where to begin

Plots are where this checklist matters most, and where the market is busiest along GST Road towards Guduvanchery and Chengalpattu, around Kelambakkam on OMR, and on the western edge near Thirumazhisai. If you are weighing one of those roads against another, OMR or GST Road sets out how the budget behaves on each.

None of this is meant to scare anybody off land. Land is the oldest investment there is, and in a growing city like Chennai it has rewarded patient owners handsomely. It rewards the careful ones first. If you have a plot or a flat in mind and would like its papers read before your money moves, share your brief with us. We will start with the patta, and we will not stop at it.