SUYUG Infra

Records walkthrough

The encumbrance certificate, and the period trap

Almost everything said about an encumbrance certificate is a sentence about the property. Almost everything true about one is a sentence about a search: a stated date range, at a stated office, over one register out of four. Get that distinction and the document becomes useful. Miss it and a clean EC will reassure you about something it never examined.

Subject

Encumbrance certificate

Jurisdiction

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu

Checked on

The whole answer, in one paragraph

An encumbrance certificate is not a statement about a property. It is a certificate that a named registration office searched its own index for a stated property over a stated range of dates, and that these are the registered transactions it found in that range. Change the dates and the answer changes. Change the office and the answer changes. And because the search runs over the register of transactions in immovable property, it will never show a will, an adoption deed or a power of attorney — those are kept in different books — nor anything that was never registered at all.

The trap

It covers a date range, not a property

Both state portals make this structural rather than optional: neither will issue a certificate without a start date and an end date, because no certificate about a property in the abstract exists to be issued.

On Kaveri the field group is headed PERIOD OF EC SEARCH and contains exactly two fields, From Date and To Date. On TNREGINET, EC Start Date and EC End Date are both marked mandatory, and the same screen carries a link reading Click Here to know data availability period.

So the first thing to read on an encumbrance certificate somebody hands you is not what it found. It is the range of dates on its face, and the question to ask about that range is: why those dates. An EC that begins in the year the current seller bought the property tells you nothing whatever about how the seller came to own it.

Karnataka’s online floor is explicit, and it is the department’s own statement rather than ours. Its help text says an encumbrance certificate for the period from 1-4-2004 to the present can be obtained online through the Kaveri portal, and that for the period before that, an EC is obtained by applying offline to the concerned Sub Registrar in the format prescribed in Form No. 22. A modern online EC has therefore examined roughly two decades. Everything before that has to be asked for separately, at a counter.

Tamil Nadu publishes its limits differently and more usefully: a page headed EC Data Availability Search sets out, sub-registrar office by sub-registrar office, the period the online index actually covers. That is a department publishing the boundaries of its own data, and it is the control we would reach for before any other.

Four questions to ask of any EC

  1. What is the date range on its face, and who chose it?
  2. Which office issued it, and is that the office with jurisdiction over the property?
  3. What property description was searched — and is it the same description as on the deed?
  4. Has it been verified against the department, or is it a PDF somebody emailed?

None of these are questions about the property. All four are questions about the search, which is what an encumbrance certificate is a record of.

Karnataka

Ordering an EC on Kaveri Online Services

The Department of Stamps and Registration's portal. Read the note on how we sourced these labels before you follow them — it is not the usual note, and the difference matters.

How we read this service

Kaveri 2.0 is a JavaScript application: the screens do not exist in the HTML a fetch receives, and our attempts to drive a browser to it were blocked. So the labels below are not from a screenshot. They are transcribed from the application's own English string file and from its own help text, both served live by kaveri.karnataka.gov.in on the date at the head of this page. That is an exact source and it is also not the same as watching the screen — it says nothing about the order the fields appear in, and a string file can hold a label the screen never draws. Treat the labels as reliable and the sequence as our reading.

The service
Department of Stamps and Registration, Government of Karnataka
Address
kaveri.karnataka.gov.in
Read on

Open Kaveri(opens in a new tab)

Obtain an encumbrance certificate in Karnataka on Kaveri Online Services

Decide the period you need, log in to the Department of Stamps and Registration's Kaveri portal, start an application for an encumbrance certificate, search by property number or by party name, set the period of search, pay, e-sign, and download the issued form.

11 steps

  1. Decide the period first, because it decides everything else
  2. Open Kaveri Online Services at the address the department itself links
  3. Read the prerequisites, because two of them are conditions and not tips
  4. Start a new application and choose the EC option
  5. Choose the basis of the search
  6. Give the location chain and the property identity
  7. Set the period of the search
  8. Run the search, then confirm what you are confirming
  9. Pay, e-sign the application, and submit it for verification
  10. Download the issued certificate, and read which form it is
  11. Verify an EC somebody sends you, rather than believing the PDF

  1. Decide the period first, because it decides everything else

    The department's own help text states that an encumbrance certificate for the period from 1-4-2004 to the present can be obtained online through the Kaveri portal, and that for the period before that, an EC is obtained by applying offline to the concerned Sub Registrar in the format prescribed in Form No. 22.

    That single sentence governs everything else on this page. There are two different procedures, and which one you need is determined not by what you want to know but by the dates you need it for.

    It also tells you that the online service has a floor. A search that begins on 1 April 2004 has not examined the twenty years before it, and a certificate covering only that window is silent about everything earlier — not because nothing happened, but because it was not asked.

    What this step does not prove

    If a seller hands you an EC starting in 2004 for land that has been in one family since the sixties, the certificate is not wrong. It has simply been asked a narrow question, and the older half of the chain has to be searched offline.

    Link to step 01

  2. Open Kaveri Online Services at the address the department itself links

    The Department of Stamps and Registration's own site links Kaveri at kaveri.karnataka.gov.in, and the EC search sits at a citizen route on that host.

    The address has moved, and this matters because a great deal of published guidance still points at the older kaverionline.karnataka.gov.in host. On the date at the head of this page the department's own site igr.karnataka.gov.in links kaveri.karnataka.gov.in for the live dashboard and for an EC search route, and the older host refused a connection from our network entirely.

    Confusingly, one message inside the new application still refers a user to the old host for a certified-copy jurisdiction it cannot serve. We report that because it is what the application says, not because we can explain it.

    What it is called on the service

    • Applicant Login
    • Encumbrance Certificatethe service, headed ENCUMBRANCE CERTIFICATE-(ONLINE EC)
    • Know the SRO where you can register

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

    Link to step 02

  3. Read the prerequisites, because two of them are conditions and not tips

    The portal publishes a list headed Prerequisite to apply for signed Encumbrance Certificate, and it states that e-Sign is mandatory to avail certified copy of document searched and hence Aadhaar number is mandatory.

    The same list says property-related details like PID, Survey No, Site No, Assessment No or Khata No need to be correctly entered, that an online payment method is recommended because the fee is based on the search period, and that citizens need not visit the Sub-Registrar's office to apply, check status or collect the certificate.

    The fee being based on the search period is worth pausing on: the price of the document is a function of how many years you ask about. That is another way of saying the period is the document.

    What it is called on the service

    • Prerequisite to apply for signed Encumbrance Certificate
    • Application Fees
    • Search Fees

    What this step does not prove

    A promoter has no business walking you through entering an Aadhaar number or a card number into a government account. This page stops at telling you the requirement exists.

    Link to step 03

  4. Start a new application and choose the EC option

    The portal's own help text says that after logging in to Kaveri 2.0 there is an option to start a new application, and that under start application the citizen should select the Encumbrance Certificate (EC) option to apply.

    What it is called on the service

    • Start a New Application
    • Application Statuswhere the application is tracked afterwards
    • Encumbrance Certificate (EC)

    Link to step 04

  5. Choose the basis of the search

    There are two, and they are labelled Search by Property Number and Search by Party Name (Seller/Purchaser/claimant) — the portal's own capitalisation included.

    A property-number search asks the index about a thing. A party-name search asks it about a person. They answer different questions and they fail differently: a name is spelled several ways across thirty years of documents, and a property number changes when a parcel is subdivided.

    The portal's own tooltips describe them plainly as searching by entering the property number and searching by entering the person name.

    What it is called on the service

    • Search by Property Number
    • Search by Party Name (Seller/Purchaser/claimant)

    Link to step 05

  6. Give the location chain and the property identity

    The property is narrowed through district, taluk, hobli or town and index village, then identified as Agricultural or Non - Agricultural and described by survey number, surnoc and hissa or by its property number.

    The portal's own tooltips walk this chain in order: select the district where the property is situated, then the taluka, then the Hobli or Town, then the index village. Only then does it ask what kind of property it is and for the numbers that identify it.

    Further fields let you give boundary details, a description of the property, a unit of measurement — Sq.Feet, Sq.Metre, Cents or Hectare — and east-to-west and north-to-south measurements. The section headings are PROPERTY DETAILS, PROPERTY NUMBER DETAILS and PARTY DETAILS.

    The portal also carries an instruction to enter one or more details to further improve your search, and its own help text says that a citizen who gets a Nil EC despite knowing a transaction happened should primarily use a greater number of search parameters. That is the portal telling you, in its own words, that an empty result can be an artefact of the question.

    What it is called on the service

    • PROPERTY DETAILS
    • PROPERTY NUMBER TYPE
    • Select Property Type
    • Agricultural
    • Non - Agricultural
    • Unit Of Measurement
    • East To West Measurement
    • North To South Measurement
    • ADD MORE DETAILS

    Link to step 06

  7. Set the period of the search

    The block is headed PERIOD OF EC SEARCH and contains exactly two fields, From Date and To Date.

    Two fields. That is the entire scope of the certificate you are about to buy, and it is the part a reader of the finished document should look at first.

    A neighbouring block is headed PROPERTY REGISTRATION DURATION, which is the register's answer about the period it holds — a different thing from the period you asked about, and worth comparing.

    What it is called on the service

    • PERIOD OF EC SEARCH
    • From Date
    • To Date
    • PROPERTY REGISTRATION DURATION

    What this step does not prove

    Whatever you choose here is what the certificate will say it examined. It will not say anything about the years on either side of it, and it will not warn you that they exist.

    Link to step 07

  8. Run the search, then confirm what you are confirming

    The action is labelled Search EC, and the results are followed by two checkboxes whose wording is a declaration about the input rather than about the property.

    The first reads: The above result displayed are related to the input provided by me. The second reads: I would like to proceed with applying for a digital signed copy of the EC.

    Read the first one again. You are certifying that the results match the input YOU gave — the portal is being scrupulous about the fact that it answered your question and not a larger one.

    What it is called on the service

    • Search EC
    • The above result displayed are related to the input provided by me.
    • I would like to proceed with applying for a digital signed copy of the EC.
    • Proceed

    Link to step 08

  9. Pay, e-sign the application, and submit it for verification

    The flow runs from Application Fees and Search Fees through Make Payment to an E-Sign Section and Submit For Verification.

    The application itself is signed, in a step the portal labels E-Sign Form 22, and its help text says that after submitting your application Form-22 will be generated. Form 22 is the application format — the same format the department's own text names for an offline pre-2004 application.

    The verification and the digital signature on the certificate are done by the office, not by you. Your signature is on the application.

    What it is called on the service

    • Application Fees
    • Search Fees
    • Make Payment
    • E-Sign Section
    • E-Sign Form 22
    • Send For E-Sign
    • Submit For Verification

    What this step does not prove

    This page prints no fee. The amount depends on the search period and is set by the department; the department publishes it, and a figure typed onto a promoter's website is a figure that was true on the day somebody typed it.

    Link to step 09

  10. Download the issued certificate, and read which form it is

    The completed document arrives in the applicant's own login as an e-signed copy, and it will be one of two forms depending on what the search found.

    The portal's help lists the formats as Form No. 15 : Encumbrance Certificate and Form No. 16 : Nil Encumbrance Certificate, with a third, Form No. 17, used where the encumbrance is searched on the basis of the name of an executant.

    There is a real contradiction here and we are not going to smooth it over. The portal's prerequisite list says that in case there is nil encumbrance, Form-16 will be issued, if not Form-15 which consists of encumbrance will be issued. Another of its own help answers says the exact opposite, that in case there is nil encumbrance Form-15 will be issued and otherwise Form-16. Two of the three strings on the portal agree that Form 15 is the certificate with entries and Form 16 is the nil certificate; one does not. Read the heading on the form you actually receive.

    What it is called on the service

    • Download e-signed Copy
    • Encumberance Datathe portal's own spelling of the results block
    • Acknowledgement Receipt

    Link to step 10

  11. Verify an EC somebody sends you, rather than believing the PDF

    Kaveri publishes a guest verification service labelled Verify EC Document, alongside Verify Document for registered instruments.

    This is the step to use when an EC arrives as an attachment from a seller or an agent, and it is the step almost nobody runs. The certificate is digitally signed; verification is what checks the signature against the department rather than against your confidence in the sender.

    What it is called on the service

    • Verify EC Document
    • Verify Document

    Link to step 11

Tamil Nadu

Viewing an EC on TNREGINET, free of charge

The Registration Department's portal takes a different approach: the search and an emailed certificate cost nothing and need no account, and a separate paid service sits behind a login.

How we read this service

Every label below was read directly off the portal's own HTML on the date at the head of this page, including the wording of two of its client-side validation messages. We did not submit a search: the form carries a captcha and returns a named person's transaction history, and running one to illustrate a guide is not a good enough reason to publish that.

The service
Registration Department, Government of Tamil Nadu
Address
tnreginet.gov.in
Read on

Open TNREGINET(opens in a new tab)

View an encumbrance certificate in Tamil Nadu on TNREGINET

Open the Tamil Nadu Registration Department portal, choose the free View EC service, pick the search basis, name the zone, district and sub registrar office, set the EC start and end dates, check the office's published data availability period, and read the result.

8 steps

  1. Open the Registration Department portal
  2. Take the E-Services menu to Encumbrance Certificate, then View EC
  3. Choose the basis of the search
  4. Name the zone, the district and the sub registrar office
  5. Set the EC start and end dates, then check the published availability
  6. Give the survey details, one row at a time
  7. Clear the captcha and read the result carefully
  8. Have the certificate emailed to you

  1. Open the Registration Department portal

    Go to tnreginet.gov.in, the portal of the Inspector General of Registration, Tamil Nadu, and switch it to English if it opens in Tamil.

    The home page carries a service card headed View/Download Encumbrance Certificate @ Free of Cost, which is the department's own description of the service and is worth taking at face value: the search and the certificate by email cost nothing.

    What it is called on the service

    • View/Download Encumbrance Certificate @ Free of Cost
    • Search/View ECthe same service from the quick-search list

    tnreginet.gov.in(opens in a new tab)

    Link to step 01

  2. Take the E-Services menu to Encumbrance Certificate, then View EC

    In the menu, E-Services carries an Encumbrance Certificate entry whose single child is View EC, and that is the free search.

    The page it opens is headed Search Encumbrance Certificate, and a button beside that heading reads Apply Online EC. The two are different services: the search is open, and Apply Online EC opens a login dialog. This guide walks the open one.

    What it is called on the service

    • E-Services
    • Encumbrance Certificate
    • View EC
    • Search Encumbrance Certificatethe page heading
    • Apply Online ECopens a login dialog

    TNREGINET Search Encumbrance Certificate(opens in a new tab)

    Link to step 02

  3. Choose the basis of the search

    The screen offers Property Details based Search — Survey Wise, Plot Flat Wise or Ward Block Wise — and Document Number based Search.

    The document-number side carries two options, and the second one names its own limit on its own label: Document Number Wise, and Previous Document Number Wise (13-2-2018 Onwards data can be Available ). The portal is telling you, in the label, that this route only reaches back so far.

    There is also a toggle between Registration Village and Revenue Village. These are two different village boundaries maintained for two different purposes, and picking the wrong one is a common way to search successfully for the wrong place.

    What it is called on the service

    • Property Details based Search
    • Survey Wise
    • Plot Flat Wise
    • Ward Block Wise
    • Document Number based Search
    • Document Number Wise
    • Previous Document Number Wise (13-2-2018 Onwards data can be Available )
    • Registration Village
    • Revenue Village

    Link to step 03

  4. Name the zone, the district and the sub registrar office

    Zone, District and Sub Registrar Office are all mandatory, and the office you choose is the office whose index will be searched.

    The Zone list on the date checked reads: Chengalpattu, Chennai, Coimbatore, Cuddalore, Madurai, Ramanathapuram, Salem, Tanjore, Thirunelveli, Trichy and Vellore. District and Sub Registrar Office fill in from the zone.

    This is the office trap made structural. A Tamil Nadu EC does not search Tamil Nadu; it searches one sub-registrar's index. If a document was registered elsewhere, this search will not see it, and the certificate will not say so.

    What it is called on the service

    • Zone
    • District
    • Sub Registrar Office

    What this step does not prove

    You cannot run this search without knowing which registration village and which office to name. Where a project's village is genuinely unsettled — as ours is for the Krishnagiri-district plots — the honest answer is that the search cannot be run until the certificate settles it.

    Link to step 04

  5. Set the EC start and end dates, then check the published availability

    EC Start Date and EC End Date are both mandatory, and the same screen carries a link reading Click Here to know data availability period.

    That link opens a page headed EC Data Availability Search, which publishes, sub-registrar office by sub-registrar office, the period for which EC data is actually available online. This is the department publishing the limits of its own index, and it is the control we would reach for before any other.

    The screen's own scripts are candid about limits too. The start-date picker is bounded at the earlier end by 1 January 1975, and the page still carries a validator whose message reads: Please select date on or before 29.12.2017 Since Data availability Period for EC is till 29.12.2017. In the version served to us one call site for that validator is commented out and another remains, so we do not assert what the form will accept today — we report that the message is in the page and send you to the availability search, which is the authoritative answer for the office you have chosen.

    What it is called on the service

    • EC Start Date
    • EC End Date
    • Click Herefollowed on the page by: to know data availability period
    • EC Data Availability Searchthe heading of the page that opens

    Link to step 05

  6. Give the survey details, one row at a time

    Under Survey Details the form asks again for Registration Village, then Survey No. and Subdivision No., and lets you add more than one row.

    The rows collect into a small table with the columns Village, Survey No., Subdivision No. and Action, so a search can cover several subdivisions of a holding at once. A parcel assembled out of several survey numbers needs all of them, and a search that names only one of them has answered about only one of them.

    What it is called on the service

    • Survey Details
    • Registration Village
    • Survey No.
    • Subdivision No.

    Link to step 06

  7. Clear the captcha and read the result carefully

    The form is protected by a captcha labelled Type the code shown, and a search that finds nothing returns the message No Documents registered during the Search Period.

    Read that message as the sentence it actually is. It does not say there are no encumbrances. It says no documents were registered during the search period — at this office, over these dates, against this survey identity.

    That is the same statement a nil certificate makes anywhere, and it is a much narrower statement than the one people take away from it.

    What it is called on the service

    • Type the code shown
    • No Documents registered during the Search Period.

    Link to step 07

  8. Have the certificate emailed to you

    The free service will send the certificate out by email, and asks only for a name and an address: Please enter name and E-mail Id. Encumbrance Certificate will be sent to the provided e-mail Id.

    What it is called on the service

    • Name
    • E Mail Id

    What this step does not prove

    An emailed certificate is exactly as good as its verification. Treat one that arrives from a seller as an unverified claim until you have run the search yourself, which on this portal costs nothing.

    Link to step 08

Why we cannot demonstrate this for our own Tamil Nadu plots

A Tamil Nadu EC search will not run without a registration village and a sub-registrar office. Our own data carries two different descriptions of where the Krishnagiri district plots sit, and we have not resolved them against a primary document. So we assert neither, and this search cannot honestly be worked against that project until the certificate settles it.

That is a real gap and we would rather print it than paper over it. We have set out what is and is not settled about the corridor’s place names on a page of its own, and the Tamil Nadu register itself is walked on the TNRERA guide.

Where an EC comes from

Section 57, and the books it does and does not open

An encumbrance certificate is not created by a portal. It is the exercise of a statutory right to inspect certain books and indexes, and the limits of the certificate are the limits the section itself draws.

The statute’s own words

Subject to the previous payment of the fees payable in that behalf, the Books Nos. 1 and 2 and the Indexes relating to Book … shall be at all times open to inspection by any person applying to inspect the same; and, subject to the provisions of section 62, copies of entries in such books shall be given to all persons applying for such copies.
Section 57(1), Registration Act, 1908One elision is marked in the quotation above, and it is the only alteration made to it: the Indexes the sub-section opens are the Indexes relating to Book 1. Marginal heading: Registering officers to allow inspection of certain books and indexes, and to give certified copies of entries. This is the statutory root of the encumbrance certificate: the public right to search the register of transactions in immovable property and its indexes. Note what it opens, and what it leaves out — the Act names the books one at a time, and the next two subsections restrict the other two.

The statute’s own words

Subject to the same provisions, copies of entries in Book No. 3 and in the Index relating thereto shall be given to persons executing the documents to which such entries relate, or to their agents, and after the death of the executants (but not before) to any person applying for such copies.
Section 57(2), Registration Act, 1908Book 3 is the wills book. The subsection is why a will does not show up on an ordinary encumbrance search: the law restricts who may see that index at all, and until the executant's death that is a closed list.

The statute’s own words

Subject to the same provisions, copies of entries in Book No. 4 and in the Index relating thereto shall be given to any person executing or claiming under the documents to which such entries respectively refer, or to his agent or representative.
Section 57(3), Registration Act, 1908Book 4 is where powers of attorney and other miscellaneous instruments sit. Same point: restricted access by statute, which is why a general property search does not reach it.

The statute’s own words

All copies given under this section shall be signed and sealed by the registering officer, and shall be admissible for the purpose of proving the contents of the original documents.
Section 57(5), Registration Act, 1908

The statute’s own words

No document required by section 17 or by any provision of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 to be registered shall (a) affect any immovable property comprised therein, or (b) confer any power to adopt, or (c) be received as evidence of any transaction affecting such property or conferring such power, unless it has been registered.
Section 49, Registration Act, 1908Marginal heading: Effect of non-registration of documents required to be registered. Quoted here because it is the other half of the EC's usefulness: what the register does not hold either was not required to be registered, or has been deprived of effect by this section.

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 books a registering officer keeps, and what goes into each of them, are fixed by the Act rather than by departmental practice — which is why an EC's blind spots are the same in every state.

    Section 51, Registration Act, 1908

  • The indexes that an encumbrance search actually runs over are themselves statutory, and are required to be made as the registering officer files each document.

    Sections 55 and 56, Registration Act, 1908

  • The forms an encumbrance certificate is issued in, and the form an application is made in, are prescribed by rules made under the Act by each state government.

    Section 69, Registration Act, 1908, and the registration rules made thereunder

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

What a clean EC does not prove

Six traps, one at a time

An encumbrance certificate answers the question it was asked. Nearly all the harm done with one is done by reading its answer as though it had answered a much larger question — so here is each of those larger questions, and what the certificate actually said instead.

The period trap: an EC covers a date range, not a property

Both portals make this structural rather than optional. Kaveri heads the field group PERIOD OF EC SEARCH and gives it exactly two fields, From Date and To Date. TNREGINET makes EC Start Date and EC End Date mandatory and refuses to search without them. Neither will issue a certificate about a property in the abstract, because no such certificate exists.

So the first thing to read on any EC handed to you is the date range on its face, and the question to ask about it is: why those dates. An EC that begins the year the seller bought the property tells you nothing about how the seller came to own it.

Karnataka's floor is explicit. The department's own help states that an EC from 1-4-2004 to the present can be obtained online, and that for the period before that, an application is made offline to the concerned Sub Registrar in Form No. 22. A modern online EC has therefore examined roughly two decades, and whatever happened before that has to be asked for separately.

The office trap: it searches one register, not the state

A Karnataka EC is issued by a sub-registrar's office and searches that office's index. TNREGINET makes the point unmissable by requiring you to name Zone, District and Sub Registrar Office before it will search at all.

A document registered at a different office, lawfully and validly, is invisible to that search. The certificate will not warn you about it, because from where the certificate is standing there is nothing to warn about.

This is why jurisdiction questions are worth settling before you order anything. Kaveri publishes a finder labelled Know the SRO where you can register; TNREGINET publishes a Know Your Jurisdiction tool. Use them first.

The book trap: three kinds of document that structurally cannot appear

This is the department's own statement of its own limits, and it deserves to be quoted rather than summarised. Kaveri's help text says: an EC only displays transactions for a specific time period if it has been registered with the Sub Registrar's Office in Book-1; wills and adoption deeds registered in Book-3 and power of attorney registered in Book-4 are not reflected in EC.

Section 57 of the Registration Act explains why in law. Book 1 and its indexes are open to any person applying to inspect them. Book 3 is open only to the executants and, after death, to others. Book 4 is open only to those executing or claiming under the documents. The EC searches the book the public may search.

The practical consequence: a clean EC is silent about a will, an adoption or a power of attorney, and each of those can matter enormously to who is entitled to sell.

The nil trap: an empty result can be an artefact of the question

Kaveri's own help anticipates a citizen who receives a nil EC even though he knows a transaction happened on the property, and the answer it gives is that the citizen must primarily use a greater number of search parameters and verify the registered document details. In other words: the portal's first explanation for an empty result is a badly framed search, not an unencumbered property.

TNREGINET says the same thing in the wording of its empty-result message: No Documents registered during the Search Period. It is a statement about the search period, phrased as one.

So when an EC comes back nil, the useful next move is to widen it — more parameters, a longer period, and a check that the office and the village are the right ones — before drawing the comfortable conclusion.

It reports what was registered. Nothing else

An encumbrance certificate is a search of a register, so its universe is registered documents. An arrangement that was never registered does not appear on it, however real it is to the people who made it.

Section 49 of the Registration Act is the reason that matters less than it sounds — a document required to be registered and not registered shall not affect the immovable property comprised in it, nor be received as evidence of any transaction affecting it. But it is not nothing: unregistered arrangements still produce litigation, possession disputes and family claims, and the EC will show you none of it.

An EC is also silent about tax dues, utility arrears, statutory notices, pending litigation that has not been registered, and physical encroachment. It is one search of one register, and it is very good at exactly that.

Two departments, two Form 16s, and one portal that contradicts itself

On Kaveri, Form 15 and Form 16 are the two shapes an encumbrance certificate takes, and Form 17 is used where the search is by the name of an executant. On the Revenue Department's Bhoomi portal, Form 16 is the RTC. Same number, unrelated documents, different departments.

Worse, Kaveri's own text disagrees with itself about which of its two forms is the nil one. Its prerequisite list says that where there is nil encumbrance Form-16 will be issued and otherwise Form-15; one of its help answers says the reverse. Its list of formats — Form No. 15 : Encumbrance Certificate and Form No. 16 : Nil Encumbrance Certificate — agrees with the prerequisite list, so two of the three strings point the same way.

We report the disagreement rather than resolving it, because we cannot resolve it from outside. Read the heading printed on the certificate you receive; that is the one that governs.

Figures this page does not print

Where the current fee is published

The Karnataka fee varies with the length of the search period, which is another way of saying that the period is the document. Both departments publish their own current figures; a number copied onto a promoter's website is a number that was true on the day somebody typed it.

The encumbrance-certificate application and search fees in Karnataka

Karnataka Department of Stamps and Registration

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Certificate and certified-copy charges in Tamil Nadu

Registration Department, Government of Tamil Nadu

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Stamp duty and registration fees on the instrument itself

The registration department of the state where the property lies

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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.

What does an encumbrance certificate actually certify?

An encumbrance certificate is not a statement about a property. It is a certificate that a named registration office searched its own index for a stated property over a stated range of dates, and that these are the registered transactions it found in that range. Change the dates and the answer changes. Change the office and the answer changes. And because the search runs over the register of transactions in immovable property, it will never show a will, an adoption deed or a power of attorney — those are kept in different books — nor anything that was never registered at all.

How far back does an online EC go in Karnataka?

The Department of Stamps and Registration's own help text states that an encumbrance certificate for the period from 1-4-2004 to the present can be obtained online through the Kaveri portal, and that for the period before that, an EC is obtained by applying offline to the concerned Sub Registrar in the format prescribed in Form No. 22. So an online EC has examined roughly the last two decades and nothing earlier.

Does an EC show a will or a power of attorney?

No, and the reason is statutory. Kaveri's own help states that an EC only displays transactions registered in Book-1, and that wills and adoption deeds registered in Book-3 and powers of attorney registered in Book-4 are not reflected in it. Section 57 of the Registration Act, 1908 opens Book 1 and its indexes to any person, and restricts who may see Books 3 and 4 at all.

My EC came back nil. Is the property clear?

It means no registered transaction was found at that office, over those dates, against that property description. The Kaveri portal's own answer to a citizen who gets a nil EC despite knowing of a transaction is that they should use a greater number of search parameters — the portal's first explanation for an empty result is the search, not the property. Widen the period, check the office and the village, and use more parameters before concluding anything.

Is the Tamil Nadu EC free?

The TNREGINET home page carries a service headed View/Download Encumbrance Certificate @ Free of Cost, and the search screen will email the certificate on a name and an email address alone. A separate button on the same screen, Apply Online EC, opens a login dialog and is a different service, which this guide does not walk.

How do I know which years the Tamil Nadu index actually covers for my office?

The search screen carries a link reading Click Here to know data availability period, which opens a page headed EC Data Availability Search. It publishes the available period sub-registrar office by sub-registrar office. That is the department's own answer and it is authoritative in a way that no third-party guide can be.

Someone emailed me an EC. Should I trust it?

Not until it is verified. Kaveri publishes a guest service labelled Verify EC Document for exactly this, and the Tamil Nadu search costs nothing to run yourself. A PDF proves that a PDF was sent.

The honest gap

What we could not check, and therefore left out

Two of these are unusual and worth reading properly: how the Karnataka labels were sourced, and a contradiction inside the Karnataka portal's own help text that we report rather than resolve.

  • Anything behind either applicant login. We did not create an account, sign in, pay a fee or e-sign, on either portal. Every step described past the login is described from the portal's own published text and not from having done it.

  • The rendered Kaveri screens. Kaveri 2.0 is a JavaScript application; our fetch received only its shell and a browser session to it was blocked. The labels are transcribed from the application's own English string file and help text served live by the same host, which is exact about wording and says nothing about layout or field order.

  • The older kaverionline.karnataka.gov.in host. It refused a connection from our network on the date checked. We cannot say whether that is general or local to us, and we report it rather than explaining it.

  • Which of Kaveri's two contradictory statements about Form 15 and Form 16 is correct. Two of the portal's three strings say Form 16 is the nil certificate and one says the opposite. We publish the disagreement and decline to resolve it.

  • What the Tamil Nadu form will accept as an end date today. The page carries a validator message naming 29.12.2017, and in the version served to us one of its call sites is commented out. We report the message and send readers to the portal's own EC Data Availability Search instead.

  • Which zone, district, sub registrar office and registration village apply to the SUYUG plots in Krishnagiri district. Our own data carries two different descriptions of that location and we have not resolved them from a primary document, so we assert neither and the search cannot be demonstrated for that project.

  • Any fee, on either portal. Both charge for some services and the Karnataka fee varies with the search period. The departments publish the current figures; we do not reprint them.

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 .