SUYUG Infra

Records walkthrough

What an RTC (pahani) proves — and what it cannot

The RTC is the record every Karnataka land conversation starts with, and it is routinely asked to answer a question it was never designed to answer. This is how to pull one, what the Land Revenue Act says an entry in it is worth, and why a buyer of a registered apartment needs a different document entirely.

Subject

Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops

Jurisdiction

Karnataka

Checked on

The document

One record, four names, and a form number

Before the click path, it is worth being precise about what you are asking for — because the same document travels under four different names and the confusion is not accidental.

RTC stands for Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops. Pahani is the Kannada name for the same document. The Revenue Department’s Bhoomi portal heads the service that produces it Records of Rights,Tenancy & Crops(RTC) Form 16 — so Form 16 is the fourth name, and it is the prescribed form the record is kept in under rules made under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964.

All four refer to one thing: an extract from the village record of rights, showing what the register holds about a survey number for a stated period. It is produced by the Revenue Department, and everything about its shape follows from what the Revenue Department exists to do — assess land held for agriculture and know who is liable for it.

That is the whole of the argument on this page, and it is worth saying once plainly before the detail. An RTC is excellent evidence about an agricultural holding. It is weak evidence about ownership, and it is close to silent about an apartment.

Two Form 16s, and they are unrelated

On the Revenue Department’s Bhoomi portal, Form 16 is the RTC. On the registration department’s Kaveri portal, Form 16 is the nil encumbrance certificate. Two departments numbered their forms independently and both happened to reach sixteen.

Nothing follows from the coincidence except confusion, and it is worth knowing about because a seller saying “I have the Form 16” has told you nothing until you know which department issued it.

We set out what the other one is, and the far more important question of what period it covers, on the encumbrance certificate guide.

8 steps

Pulling an RTC off the Bhoomi portal

The free service is genuinely free and needs nothing from anybody. Every label below is the portal's own, read off the live page on the date in the masthead.

How we read this service

The service names, page headings and field labels below were read directly off the portal's own HTML on the date at the head of this page. We did not pull an RTC for any particular survey number: doing that means publishing a named person's landholding, and that is not ours to publish. So this walkthrough describes the form and stops at the button, and the section on what an RTC is worth is argued from the Act rather than from a screenshot.

The service
Revenue Department, Government of Karnataka — Bhoomi Monitoring Cell
Address
landrecords.karnataka.gov.in
Read on

Open Bhoomi(opens in a new tab)

View a Karnataka RTC (pahani) on the Bhoomi portal

Open the Revenue Department's Bhoomi land-records portal, choose the View RTC and MR service, narrow a survey number down through district, taluk, hobli and village, choose the period, and understand what the record you get back is evidence of.

8 steps

  1. Open the Revenue Department's land-records portal
  2. Choose View RTC and MR
  3. Narrow the location, in the order the form demands it
  4. Enter the survey number, surnoc and hissa
  5. Choose the period, because an RTC is issued for one
  6. Read the mutation side, not only the current entry
  7. Understand what i-RTC adds, and what it costs you in privacy
  8. Verify an RTC somebody has emailed you

  1. Open the Revenue Department's land-records portal

    Go to landrecords.karnataka.gov.in, which is the Revenue Department's own land-records site and carries the page title Revenue Department Services | Govt of Karnataka | Bhoomi Monitoring Cell.

    Bhoomi is the name of the Revenue Department's land-records system, not a separate agency. The site is a directory of services rather than a single application, and the RTC services sit in a cluster of their own alongside conversion, survey and mutation services.

    Two related addresses appear on the same page and it is worth knowing which is which before you start. Mojini, at bhoomojini.karnataka.gov.in, is the survey side — sketches and measurement. Dishaank is a mapping app distributed through the Play Store. Neither of them is the RTC.

    What it is called on the service

    • View RTC and MRthe free, view-only RTC and Mutation Register service
    • i- RTCthe signed copy; needs registration and payment
    • View Khatha Extractthe REVENUE khata, not the municipal one
    • Bhoomi RTC Mutation History
    • RTC XML Verification

    landrecords.karnataka.gov.in(opens in a new tab)

    Link to step 01

  2. Choose View RTC and MR

    The free service is called View RTC and MR, and the page it opens is headed Records of Rights,Tenancy & Crops(RTC) Form 16 | Mutation Register | Mutation Status.

    That heading is worth reading slowly, because it names the document three ways at once. RTC is the abbreviation. Records of Rights, Tenancy and Crops is what the abbreviation stands for. Form 16 is the prescribed form the record is kept in under the Karnataka Land Revenue Rules, 1966 — which is why an RTC always looks the same whichever taluk it came from.

    Pahani is the fourth name. It is the Kannada name for the same document, and a seller who offers you a pahani and a seller who offers you an RTC are offering you the same thing.

    What it is called on the service

    • Records of Rights,Tenancy & Crops(RTC) Form 16 | Mutation Register | Mutation Statusthe page heading, spacing exactly as the portal sets it

    Bhoomi View RTC and MR(opens in a new tab)

    What this step does not prove

    This Form 16 is the RTC. It is not the Form 16 that appears on the registration department's Kaveri portal, where Form 16 is the NIL encumbrance certificate. Two different departments number their forms independently and both numbered one of them sixteen.

    Link to step 02

  3. Narrow the location, in the order the form demands it

    The form asks for district, taluk, hobli and village in that order, and each dropdown only fills once the one above it has been answered.

    That cascade is not a user-interface flourish. It is the revenue hierarchy: a survey number is unique within a village, a village sits in a hobli, a hobli in a taluk, a taluk in a district. A survey number quoted without its village is not an address — it is a number that exists in thousands of villages at once.

    This is a common way a land enquiry goes wrong on this corridor, and we have written a separate page about it, because two of the place names in our own postal addresses name more than one settlement.

    What it is called on the service

    • Select District
    • Select Taluk
    • Select Hobli
    • Select Village

    Link to step 03

  4. Enter the survey number, surnoc and hissa

    The parcel itself is identified by three fields — Survey Number, Select Surnoc and Select Hissa — and all three are part of its name.

    A hissa is a subdivision of a survey number, which is why land is described as 27/1 and 27/2 rather than as 27. Surnoc is the further qualifier the record carries where one exists. Dropping either of them from a description does not make the description shorter; it makes it ambiguous.

    Our own Karnataka registration certificates carry survey numbers in exactly this form, and they are printed in full on our registrations page precisely so that they can be typed into this box by somebody who has never spoken to us.

    What it is called on the service

    • Survey Number
    • Select Surnoc
    • Select Hissa

    Link to step 04

  5. Choose the period, because an RTC is issued for one

    The last two fields are Select Period and Year, and they exist because an RTC is a record for a stated agricultural period rather than a statement about the parcel for all time.

    This is the same shape as an encumbrance certificate, and it catches people the same way. What comes back describes the state of the register for the period you asked about. Ask about a different period and you may get a different answer, and both answers can be perfectly correct.

    If somebody hands you an RTC, the first thing to look for is which period it covers and how long ago that was.

    What it is called on the service

    • Select Period
    • Year

    What this step does not prove

    A recent RTC is not a warranty that nothing has happened since. It is a copy of the register as it stood for the period named on it.

    Link to step 05

  6. Read the mutation side, not only the current entry

    The same service carries the Mutation Register and Mutation Status, and the portal publishes a separate Bhoomi RTC Mutation History report survey number by survey number.

    A mutation is the revenue record catching up with a transaction that has already happened somewhere else — a sale, an inheritance, a partition, a court decree. The register of mutations is therefore a list of the moments the record changed hands and why, which is a different and often more useful document than the current entry alone.

    The history report is published at a long address under the pendency service, and it is reachable from the portal's front page as Bhoomi RTC Mutation History.

    What it is called on the service

    • Mutation Register
    • Mutation Status

    Bhoomi RTC Mutation History(opens in a new tab)

    What this step does not prove

    A mutation entry records that somebody reported an acquisition of rights and that the revenue officer acted on the report. It is not the instrument that transferred anything, and it does not adjudicate a dispute about who owns the land.

    Link to step 06

  7. Understand what i-RTC adds, and what it costs you in privacy

    The free service gives you a view; i-RTC gives you a copy the department stands behind, and reaching it starts with a Citizen Registration form.

    The registration form asks for First Name, Last Name and Mobile Number as mandatory fields, with Email and Aadhar Card Number offered as well, and it states that payment details and RTC details will be sent by SMS to the number given. So the signed copy is a paid, identified service, and the free view is not.

    We did not register, did not pay and therefore did not obtain a signed copy. What the signed document looks like, and what the current fee is, are outside what this page has checked.

    What it is called on the service

    • *First Name
    • *Last Name
    • *Mobile Number
    • Enter Your Email
    • Aadhar Card Number

    i-RTC citizen registration(opens in a new tab)

    Link to step 07

  8. Verify an RTC somebody has emailed you

    The portal publishes a service headed Bhoomi Online RTC XML Verification, which is the check to run on a document you were given rather than one you fetched.

    This is the step that matters most and gets skipped most. A PDF that arrived as an attachment proves nothing about the register; it proves that somebody sent you a PDF. The verification service exists so that a copy can be checked against the source.

    We could not read this service's form fields: the page our fetch received carried the heading and the site chrome and built its form on the client. So we can tell you the service exists and where it is, and we are not going to invent the fields.

    RTC XML Verification(opens in a new tab)

    What this step does not prove

    Verification tells you a document matches the register. It still does not tell you that the register is right — that is what the next section is about.

    Link to step 08

What the Act says an entry is worth

Presumed true until the contrary is proved

Every claim on this page about what an RTC establishes is a claim about a statute, so the statute is quoted with its citation attached. The sentence that governs the whole subject is nineteen words long.

The statute’s own words

An entry in the Record of Rights and a certified entry in the Register of Mutations [or in the patta book] shall be presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted therefor.
Section 133, Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964Marginal heading: Presumption regarding entries in the records. The words in square brackets were inserted by Act 23 of 1982. Read the operative words slowly: presumed, until the contrary is proved. That is a rebuttable presumption, which is a rule about who has to prove what in a dispute — not a declaration that the entry is correct.

The statute’s own words

Subject to any law for the time being in force regarding erection of buildings or construction of wells or tanks, an occupant of land assessed or held for the purpose of agriculture is entitled by himself, his servants, tenants, agents, or other legal representatives, to erect farm buildings, construct wells or tanks, or make any other improvements thereon for the better cultivation of the land or its more convenient use for the purpose aforesaid.
Section 95(1), Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964Marginal heading: Uses of agricultural land and the procedure for use of agricultural land for other purpose. Quoted here because it is the sentence that frames what an RTC is a record OF. The occupant's entitlement described in it is an entitlement to farm the land, and everything that is not farming needs the permission the rest of section 95 deals with.

Cited, not quoted

The provision is named so you can read it yourself. The wording is not reproduced here, because we have not transcribed it from a primary text in this pass and a paraphrase in quotation marks is worse than no quotation.

  • The record of rights itself, and the duty to maintain it, come from the Record of Rights chapter of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act rather than from the Bhoomi software.

    Chapter XI, Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 (sections 127 onwards)

  • A person who acquires a right in land is required to report it, and the register of mutations is built out of those reports rather than out of the deeds themselves.

    Sections 128 and 129, Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964

  • The form the RTC is kept in — the Form 16 named in the portal's own page heading — is a form prescribed by rules made under the Act, not a departmental convention.

    Karnataka Land Revenue Rules, 1966

Terms used above are defined on the glossary, with the statutory wording wherever a statute defines them.

What a clean RTC does not settle

Four questions it cannot answer for you

An RTC answers the question it was asked. Most of the damage done with one is done by reading its answer as though it had answered a larger question — so here is each of those larger questions, and what the record actually said instead.

An entry is presumed true. That is not the same as being true

Section 133 says an entry in the Record of Rights shall be presumed to be true until the contrary is proved. Every word of that sentence is doing work. Presumed means a court will start from it. Until the contrary is proved means a court will move off it if somebody shows better evidence. And the better evidence, in almost every case, is a registered instrument.

So an RTC in a seller's name is a reason to believe, and it is not a finding of ownership. Title investigation is what settles ownership, and it is done by reading the chain of registered documents — the parent deeds — not by reading a revenue entry.

It is a record about agricultural land, and your apartment is not agricultural land

The Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops is a revenue record: it exists so the state can assess land held for agriculture and know who is liable. Crops are in its name. Once a parcel has been lawfully converted to a non-agricultural use, the questions that matter about it stop being revenue questions and become planning, building and registration questions.

That is why an RTC is close to the whole story when you are buying farmland, and close to a footnote when you are buying a flat. For the flat, the operative documents are the sanctioned plan, the approvals behind it, the regulator's registration, the agreement for sale, the occupancy certificate and the registered conveyance — a different stack entirely, which we have set out in order on its own page.

The khata on this portal is not the khata your bank means

Bhoomi publishes a service called View Khatha Extract, and the page behind it is headed in Kannada as the Bhoomi khata copy alongside the RTC Form 16. That is the REVENUE khata — the account in the village register that ties a holding to a holder.

The khata a bank, a corporation or a gram panchayat asks about is a different register kept by a different body: the urban property record now held by the Bengaluru city corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority, or the panchayat property record held on the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department's e-Swathu system. Producing one when you were asked for the other wastes a fortnight, and it happens constantly.

It answers for a period, and it goes stale quietly

The form makes you choose Select Period and Year before it will return anything, which tells you what kind of document you are asking for: a copy of the register for a stated agricultural period. It is not a live statement about the parcel.

Nothing on a printed RTC announces that it has been overtaken. So the only safe way to use one somebody hands you is to note the period on its face, then pull the current one yourself from the free service and compare — and to run the mutation history as well, because that is where a change of hands shows up first.

If you are buying a flat

What to read instead

If the property you are considering is a registered apartment, the RTC belongs in the history section of your file rather than at the front of it. These are the documents that answer the questions you actually have.

Where the RTC still helps

  • Establishing what the land was, and who the register showed as holding it, before it was converted.
  • Reading the mutation history, which is where a change of hands shows up as a dated event rather than as an assertion.
  • Checking that the survey numbers on a promoter’s documents are survey numbers that exist, in the village they are said to be in.
  • Buying agricultural land, where it is the central record rather than a background one.
  • Reading the extent off it. The revenue record writes an extent as an acres-and-guntha pair and a layout writes the same area in square feet, so the two rarely look like the same number — our guntha to square feet converter carries a figure between them. Where a document states an extent, that stated extent governs.

What answers the flat questions

  • The conversion order, the commencement certificate and the sanctioned plan — the chain we set out in order on the approvals stack.
  • The RERA registration and the approvals filed with it, searchable on the regulator’s own register — we walk that search step by step.
  • An encumbrance certificate over a properly chosen period, which is a search of the registration index rather than the revenue record.
  • The registered agreement for sale, and eventually the registered conveyance deed — two instruments that are not the same thing.

Questions

The ones people actually ask

Each answer below is published as the page's answer to that question in its structured data, in exactly the words printed here.

Is a pahani the same as an RTC?

Yes. Pahani is the Kannada name for the Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops, and RTC is the English abbreviation for it. The Bhoomi portal heads the same service Records of Rights,Tenancy & Crops(RTC) Form 16 and describes it elsewhere as Pahani online. One document, three names.

Does an RTC prove who owns the land?

No. Section 133 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 says an entry in the Record of Rights shall be presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted therefor. That is a rebuttable presumption about evidence, not a determination of title. Ownership is established from the chain of registered instruments, read by an advocate.

Does an RTC matter when I am buying an apartment in a registered project?

Only as history. An RTC records agricultural holding, and a registered apartment project sits on land that has been converted out of agriculture. What settles the questions a flat buyer actually has is the conversion order, the development permission and sanctioned plan, the RERA registration and the approvals filed with it, the agreement for sale, the occupancy certificate and the registered conveyance deed.

Is the free RTC on Bhoomi a legally usable copy?

The free service is described on the portal as View RTC and MR, and it gives you a view. The department's signed copy is the separate i-RTC service, which begins with a Citizen Registration form asking for name and mobile number and involves a payment. We did not register or pay, so this page does not describe the signed output.

Someone emailed me an RTC. How do I check it?

Use the portal's own service, headed Bhoomi Online RTC XML Verification, rather than trusting the attachment. A PDF proves that a PDF was sent. Verification checks a copy against the register — although even a verified copy only tells you what the register says, not whether the register is right.

The honest gap

What we could not check, and therefore left out

A walkthrough that quietly skips the parts its author could not reach is the exact failure this section exists to prevent. These are the things we did not verify on the date in the masthead, listed rather than smoothed over.

  • What an actual RTC returns. We did not run a search for any survey number, because doing so publishes a named person's landholding on a promoter's website, and that is not ours to publish. Every field label above is from the search form; nothing here describes a result.

  • The fields on the RTC XML Verification service. The page our fetch received carried the heading and the site chrome and built its form on the client, so we can say the service exists and where it is, and we have not described how to use it.

  • The i-RTC signed copy, its fee and its output. Reaching it requires creating an account and making a payment, and a promoter has no business walking a buyer through typing personal details into a government account.

  • Whether every taluk's data on the portal is equally current. Bhoomi is a state-wide system maintained taluk by taluk, and we have no basis for a claim about uniformity.

  • The Kannada wording of any label. Everything quoted above is the English string the portal served us, except the Kannada headings on the khata service, which we have described rather than transliterated.

Keep going

The rest of this set

Four pages about the records rather than the registers: what a land record proves, what the whole approval chain is, what an encumbrance certificate covers, and which instrument actually transfers a property.

Then go and check us

Every registration this site publishes is on the registrations page, with the regulator, the promoter as registered and the survey numbers transcribed from the certificate. The portal walkthroughs show you how to search the regulator’s own register for them. Read those after this, not before.

SUYUG registrationsEvery guide

If anything on this page is wrong, out of date, or capable of misleading someone, tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it. That applies with particular force to anything describing a government portal, which is where a page like this goes stale first. Write to info@suyug.com or call +91-76077 12345. Last checked .