The 11E Sketch: What It Is, and When Karnataka Asks for One

Sell a whole survey number and the paperwork is straightforward: the instrument names the number, the extent and the boundaries, and everyone knows what changed hands. Sell part of one and a question appears that no extent can answer. Which part?

The 11E sketch is Karnataka’s answer to that question, and it is one of the few documents on the corridor that buyers meet without ever being told what it is for.

What the document actually is

It is a sketch of a portion of a survey number, prepared and issued by the Department of Survey, Settlement and Land Records of the Government of Karnataka. It shows the parent survey number, the portion being separated, that portion’s measured dimensions and extent, and its position relative to the boundaries of the parent parcel. It takes its name from the number of the form it is issued on.

Two things follow from that description. It is a government document rather than a private drawing, so it is checkable against the department’s own records. And it is a survey document rather than a title document — it describes ground, not ownership.

When it comes up

The sketch arises on a sale of part of a survey number of land held in the revenue records — typically agricultural land that has not been laid out into a plotted development with its own approved layout drawing.

In practice a sub-registrar’s office will ask for the sketch before registering the sale of a portion, and the reason is not bureaucratic. An instrument that conveys an extent out of a larger parcel without identifying which extent is a document that cannot be given effect on the ground. The sketch is what makes the conveyance locatable.

Where the whole survey number is being conveyed, or where the land has already been subdivided and each part carries its own hissa number and its own record, the question the sketch answers has already been answered.

How one is obtained

The steps are the same in every taluk, and the applicant is the seller, because the sketch is issued against the parcel and its recorded holder.

1. An application is made to the survey department for the parent survey number, through the department’s survey-services system.
2. A licensed surveyor or a departmental surveyor is assigned, and a date is fixed for measurement.
3. The parcel is measured on site against the departmental record and the existing survey documents for the parent number.
4. The sketch is prepared and issued, showing the portion, its measurements and its position within the parent parcel.

Because the sketch is measured against the department’s own record of the parent parcel, a discrepancy between what is on the ground and what is recorded surfaces here rather than after registration. That is a feature: it is much cheaper to discover a boundary problem before the instrument is executed.

What to check on the sketch itself

• The parent survey number and the village on the sketch, against the survey number and village in the instrument and in the record of rights. All three should read identically, spelling included.
• The extent of the portion, against the extent stated in the instrument. A revenue extent is written as acres and guntha, and the digits after the point count guntha, not tenths of an acre.
• The position of the portion within the parent parcel — front, rear, road-facing or interior. Two portions of equal extent from the same survey number are not equivalent parcels.
• Access. A portion carved out of the interior of a parcel needs a recorded way in. The sketch shows whether one exists as drawn.
• Issue details — the office, the reference and the date, so the sketch can be traced back to the department that issued it.

The four things it does not prove

• It does not prove title. Ownership comes from the chain of registered instruments, read with the record of rights maintained under the record-of-rights provisions of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — sections 127 to 129, with the presumption of correctness in section 133.
• It does not prove the land is free of encumbrances. That is what an encumbrance search is for; section 57 of the Registration Act, 1908 opens the registering officer’s books and indexes to inspection and to copies, which is what makes an independent search possible.
• It does not convert the land. Diverting agricultural land to a non-agricultural purpose is a separate permission under section 95 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964, and a sketch says nothing about whether it has been obtained.
• It does not approve a layout. Cutting a parcel into plots for sale is a planning approval from the competent authority, which is a different process with a different output.

Where it sits in the sequence

The last row is the one buyers skip. A registered instrument transfers the interest; it does not update the revenue record by itself. Until the mutation is effected and the portion carries its own subdivision number, the record still shows the parent parcel and its earlier holder.

Two failure modes worth knowing

A sketch that does not match the ground. Where a boundary has moved informally over years — a bund shifted, a wall built to a convenient line — the sketch will show the recorded position and the ground will show another. The recorded position is the one the instrument will describe.

A sketch used as evidence of something else. A sketch in a file makes a parcel look documented, and it does not answer the conversion question, the encumbrance question or the approval question. Each of those has its own document, and a seller who offers a sketch in place of one of them has answered a question you did not ask.

The full purchase sequence, stage by stage, with the document that settles each check, is set out in the buyer guide. Terms such as record of rights, mutation, hissa and encumbrance are defined in the glossary, and every SUYUG registration, with its regulator and the register it sits in, is transcribed on the registrations page.