How a Karnataka Survey Number Is Written

Every property in Karnataka carries two addresses. One is the address on the hoarding, the courier slip and the map pin. The other is the address the state files records under, and it is built out of entirely different components.

You cannot order a record with the first one. This is how the second one is put together.

The stack, from the ground up

Written out, a Karnataka revenue address reads from the smallest unit to the largest — survey number, then village, then hobli, then taluk. It is the opposite direction from a postal address, which starts with a house and ends with a PIN code.

The survey number and the slash

A survey number identifies a parcel within a village’s survey. When a parcel is divided, each part takes a subdivision number, written after a slash: 27/1 is subdivision 1 of survey number 27. That subdivision is commonly called the hissa number.

Subdivision can go further, and a parcel divided again may be written with a second level. What never changes is the reading order: the number before the first slash is the parent parcel, and everything after it narrows.

Two consequences matter to a buyer. A record ordered against survey number 27 will describe the parent parcel, not the subdivision you are buying — you have to quote the subdivision. And a document that names only the parent number while a subdivision exists is describing something larger than the transaction.

Why the village is not optional

Survey numbers are unique inside a village and repeat freely outside it. There is a survey number 27 in a great many villages in Karnataka, and quoting a bare number to a records office is quoting nothing.

This is also where corridor confusion begins. Village names on the Sarjapur Road corridor repeat, transliterate several ways and sit next to identically named places elsewhere in the state. A record search that returns nothing is more often a village-name problem than a missing record.

What the hobli does

The hobli is the revenue tier between the village and the taluk — a grouping of villages under a revenue inspector. Most buyers never encounter it until they read a certificate or order a document, at which point they discover it is a required field.

It also disambiguates. Where two villages in a taluk have similar names, the hobli is often what separates them, which is precisely why the field exists on the forms.

Reading the stack off a real certificate

Registration under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 is the one point at which a developer’s land is described in revenue terms on a public document. The registration application under section 4 of the Act covers the land and its title, and the certificate that issues carries the parcel description.

SUYUG’s two registered apartment projects at Sompura Gate print their revenue address in exactly the form described above. THE1 is registered against Sy. Nos. 27/1 and 27/2, Sompura Village, Sarjapura Hobli, Anekal Taluk. Saffron is registered against Sy. No. 516, Sarjapura Village, Sarjapura Hobli, Anekal Taluk.

Read those two lines against the table above and the whole structure resolves. Two different villages, the same hobli, the same taluk. One project on a subdivided parcel with two subdivisions, the other on an undivided survey number. Neither address could be guessed from a road name, and both can be checked against the register by anybody who wants to.

How to quote it when ordering a record

1. Take the description from a document, not from a conversation — the registered instrument, the record of rights or the certificate.
2. Quote the survey number with its subdivision, exactly as written, slash included.
3. Quote the village as the document spells it, and be ready to try the common alternative spellings if the search returns nothing.
4. Add the hobli and the taluk. Most record searches ask for both, and neither is derivable from a postal address.
5. Keep the district in view, because it decides which office and which state-level register you are dealing with — and on this corridor the district can change to one in another state entirely.

Why the revenue address is the one that governs

Because it is the one every record is filed under. The record of rights, the mutation register, the encumbrance search, the survey sketch and the property tax register all key on the survey number and the village. The marketing address keys on nothing.

The record of rights itself is maintained under sections 127 to 129 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964, and section 133 of that Act attaches a presumption of correctness to an entry in it until the contrary is proved. That presumption attaches to an entry against a survey number — which is the whole reason the survey number is worth getting right.

Every SUYUG registration is transcribed field by field, certificate by certificate, on the registrations page, including the survey numbers above. The terms in this piece are defined in the glossary, and the order in which a buyer works through these documents is the buyer guide.