A-Khata vs B-Khata vs e-Khata - What's Safe to Buy in Karnataka

 

The seller says the khata is clean, and you are ready to sign. It helps to know what that word is actually promising. A khata is the account a local body keeps for a property so it can collect tax and give the property a civic identity. It is not the title deed, and it is not proof that the seller owns the land. A clean khata and a clear title are two different things, and that single mix-up costs property buyers money across Karnataka, as it does elsewhere in India.

This guide covers A-khata, B-khata and e-khata as they work across the state, for land and farmland, not only for a flat inside city limits. Most of what you find online answers for an apartment in Bengaluru. If you are buying a plot, an estate or agricultural land, the records you need to check are not always the ones the city uses, and this guide draws that line. First, the plain distinction people come here for. In plain terms, here is the difference.

An A-khata is a property recorded as fully compliant with building and land rules, and it is the one that clears a bank loan, a building approval and a clean resale, so it is the record buyers check for first. A B-khata is recorded so the owner can pay property tax, but the property is not fully compliant, which is why a loan, a new build and a resale each become harder. An e-khata is the electronic version of either an A or a B khata, and it does not by itself change a property's legal status: an e-khata over a B-khata is still a B-khata until the underlying issue is fixed through conversion. The compliance and loan distinction follows a June 2026 lender guide (Tata Capital); the point that the digital record does not upgrade the property is the settled view across the top search results. The definitions matter less than what each one lets you do, so here is what each one blocks.

A khata is the account a municipality or gram panchayat maintains for a property, holding its owner, size, location and property tax. The word means “account”, and that is what it is: it identifies who pays tax on the property and gives it a civic identity. It is not the same as the title, and the Karnataka Revenue Department's land-records portal (landrecords.karnataka.gov.in) is where the underlying ownership record is checked, not the khata alone.

An A-khata is a property that qualifies on both counts a local body cares about: it has valid building plan approval and its land conversion is complete, so it is treated as fully compliant. This is the standing lenders and developers describe as loan-ready and build-ready.

A B-khata is a property the local body records for property tax while noting that it is not fully compliant. It may sit on revenue land, or carry plan deviations, unauthorised construction or pending approvals. The B register lets the owner pay tax; it does not certify the property as regular.

An e-khata is the digital record of an A or a B khata on the local body's online system, which in Bengaluru is the BBMP, used to pay tax and to verify the record online. It is not a separate legal class, and it does not upgrade a B-khata to an A-khata. Getting an e-khata digitises the existing record; it does not clear the compliance behind it.

Where a property is not yet compliant, moving from B to A means clearing those deviations and paying the associated charges, including betterment charges, which is a conversion process rather than a certificate you request. Definitions in hand, the money question is what each type lets you do.

An A-khata property is fully compliant, so it clears a bank home loan, a building plan approval, a clean resale and a straightforward khata transfer at registration. A B-khata property is recorded for tax but not fully compliant, so each of those four is constrained or blocked: loans are usually declined, construction approvals are restricted, resale is harder, and the transfer reflects the same limited status. The table below sets out the permit-and-block position across all four, each row attributed to its source.

What you want to do
A-khata
B-khata
e-khataBank home loan | Qualifies readily for a home or mortgage loan (Tata Capital, Jun 2026). | Usually not eligible; some lenders finance only after extra verification and on stricter terms (Tata Capital, Jun 2026). | Reflects the underlying A or B status; a digital record does not create loan eligibility on its own.
New construction (building plan approval, trade licence) | Building plan and trade licence approvals are straightforward (Tata Capital, Jun 2026; Google AI Overview). | Building plan and renovation approvals are restricted or delayed (Tata Capital, Jun 2026). | Depends on the A or B status behind it; the digital record changes nothing here.
Resale | Preferred by buyers; a cleaner exit and higher market value (Casagrand, May 2026; Tata Capital, Jun 2026). | Harder to sell, because most buyers want a compliant property (Tata Capital, Jun 2026). | Neutral; buyers still look through to the A or B status.
Transfer / registration | Straightforward transfer and registration. | Transfer reflects the non-compliant status. | Within BBMP-GBA limits, registration and khata transfer now run through the e-khata, but it reflects the underlying A or B status rather than changing it.

None of these four is fixed by requesting a certificate or a digital download. A B-khata's only real route to A-khata standing is DC conversion, where the land itself allows it, which the later sections cover. The reason a B-khata blocks so much traces back to what e-khata recently changed.

An e-khata is the electronic property record issued through the BBMP-GBA e-Aasthi system, and within those city limits it has become the record you need to register a sale, transfer a khata, or get municipal approvals on a property. An application to register or transfer a property now runs through it. 

Reported sources place the shift on the e-Aasthi platform and put the requirement across property registration, tax verification, khata transfer and municipal approvals.

Two things hold steady here. First, this is an online record and an online status you can look up, but the requirement applies inside the BBMP-GBA (Greater Bengaluru Authority) area, not automatically everywhere in the state. Second, it is an urban-local-body record. It does not, on its own, govern land that sits under a gram panchayat, which is a separate system covered further down.

One caution on timing. A reduced-charge conversion window was reported earlier in 2026, but this guide does not state any regularisation window as currently open.

If a property is already B-khata, the next question is what can realistically be done about it.

The khata certificate, or the khata extract, states a property's khata number, its owner and its status, and reading it against the local body's online record tells you whether the property is A-khata or B-khata. That is the whole check at this stage: identify what the property already holds.

Three places carry the answer. The khata certificate or extract itself names the status. The local body's online system shows the same record as an e-khata: e-Aasthi for a BBMP property inside Bengaluru, and the panchayat system for land under a gram panchayat, where the records are Form 9 and Form 11 rather than an A or B khata. The Karnataka Revenue Department's land-records portal (landrecords.karnataka.gov.in) is the official place to verify the underlying entry.

One honest limit belongs here. Reading the khata tells you the khata; it does not by itself prove the title is clean. A property can carry a tidy khata and still have a defect in its ownership chain, which is the section after next. Suppose the check comes back B-khata. What are the real options, and what do they cost in time?

A B-khata property can sometimes move to A-khata, but only where the underlying land is eligible for it, so your real choice is one of three: accept the constraints and hold the property as it is, pursue conversion where a genuine path exists, or walk away from the deal. Which one is right turns on whether the land itself can be regularised, not on how badly you want it to.

Conversion, where it is possible, is neither quick nor free. Moving a B-khata toward A-khata standing means clearing the deviations, passing a site inspection, and paying charges. A June 2026 lender guide (Tata Capital) puts these at roughly Rs 200 to Rs 250 per square metre in betterment charges, plus a transfer fee of about 2% of stamp duty; treat those as an attributed range, not a fixed quote, and confirm current figures against the BBMP-GBA schedule.

The eligibility gate is the part most buyers underestimate. A great deal of land carrying a B-khata sits on revenue land or simply lacks DC conversion, the order from the Deputy Commissioner that turns agricultural land to non-agricultural use. The scale is on record: the Karnataka Revenue Ministry, reported in Deccan Herald in January 2025, found that only 4.69 lakh of 72.11 lakh non-agricultural-use parcels were properly converted, about 93% not converted, and unconverted parcels are the ones that get a B-khata and stay blocked for a bank loan. Conversion is closer to an exception than the routine step some listings imply.

On timing, do not assume a discount window is open. A reduced-charge period was reported earlier in 2026, but this guide does not state one as currently available.

All of this assumes khata is the thing that makes a property safe. It is not, and that is the confusion that costs buyers the most.

A khata is not proof of ownership. It is a record a local body keeps for property tax and civic identity, and a clean khata can sit over a property whose title has a defect. The khata answers who pays the tax; it does not answer whether the seller truly owns the land, free of prior claims.

The records that actually test title are different ones, and an advocate reads them together: the RTC (Pahani), which is the record of rights for the land; the Encumbrance Certificate (EC), which shows registered charges and past transactions; the mother deed and the mutation chain, which trace ownership through time as recorded by the state; DC conversion, which confirms the land's permitted use; and the property's PTCL position. No single one is the answer; they are read as a set.

Two cautions make the point concrete. A clean EC on its own does not rule out a PTCL claim, so a quiet encumbrance record reassures without clearing the risk. And the PTCL Act itself has moved: the 2023 amendment, with rules in 2024, removed the time-bar on restoration claims over granted SC and ST land and applies retrospectively, so even an old, clean-looking chain can be reopened. These are the parts to have verified independently rather than taken on trust, and the Karnataka Revenue Department portal (for the RTC and EC) and legal reporting such as SCC Online (for the PTCL amendment) are where to check them.

This gap matters even more once the property is rural farmland, where the BBMP khata rules do not even apply.

A gram panchayat property, meaning land outside city and municipal limits, does not run on the BBMP A or B khata at all. Its record is a panchayat khata issued through e-Swathu, the state portal for panchayat property records, and the documents are Form 9 and Form 11 rather than an A-khata or B-khata. Form 9 is the panchayat's Demand Register entry, the tax demand raised on the property. Form 11 is the Tax Assessment Register; Form 11A is its digital version and Form 11B is the tax-payment receipt. Urban local bodies use e-Aasthi; panchayats use e-Swathu. It runs in parallel, with its own forms.

There is an important boundary inside this. Form 9 and Form 11 apply to DC-converted land and to residential plots within panchayat jurisdiction. They do not apply to raw agricultural land that sits outside the panchayat's taxation scope. For agricultural land, the operative record is the RTC (Pahani), and khata in the BBMP A or B sense does not map onto it until the land is DC-converted for non-agricultural use. This is the line the city-focused guides miss, and it is the one that matters for a farmland buyer anywhere in Karnataka, and elsewhere in India where panchayat records govern rural plots online.

For a buyer looking at managed farmland in corridors such as Sakleshpur, Chikkaballapur, Chikmagalur or Dharmasthala, this is the relevant system, because those are rural and hill parcels under panchayat and revenue records, not BBMP ones.

Which is why, whatever the khata, the decision comes down to the documents you put in front of your advocate.

Your advocate is the person who clears the deal or blocks it, so hand them the full record set, not the khata alone. The set that lets an advocate actually check a property is the title deed and mother deed, the RTC (Pahani), the Encumbrance Certificate (EC), the khata extract, the DC conversion order, the PTCL or non-granted-land position, and the mutation chain that records each transfer of ownership.

Khata has one line in that list. It evidences tax and civic identity, and it is read alongside the title records, not in place of them. A buyer who leads with the khata and stops there has checked the smallest of these documents.

What actually unblocks an advocate's review is a complete, indexed set produced without friction. The common failure is not a missing fact; it is documents that arrive slowly or in pieces. On the strength of the records themselves, the honest posture is to invite the advocate to verify each one independently rather than to be told the title is clean.

The next real step is straightforward: put the papers in front of your advocate and let them check the title, the encumbrances and the transfer chain for the specific parcel. If you are looking at a Vibez plot, you can ask for the set of records we hand to an advocate for exactly that review.