How to get your mouza map and Dag sheets in West Bengal

West Bengal keeps two things about your land and they come from two different screens. The Porcha tells you who holds the Khatian and which Dag numbers sit under it. The mouza map shows where those Dags actually are and where their boundaries run. People go looking for the second and are handed the first, which is why so many searches for a West Bengal mouza map end at a text record.

What you are actually asking for

Mouza map

The cadastral map of a whole revenue mouza, showing every Dag with its boundaries and plot number. A large mouza is drawn across several adjacent sheets. This is the thing that has to be joined back together.

Porcha

The record of rights for a Khatian: the recorded owner, the Dag numbers under it, the area of each and its classification. It names the land; it does not draw it.

J.L. number

The Jurisdiction List number that identifies a mouza within its police station area. Mouza names repeat across blocks, so this is what makes a request unambiguous.

Start with the record, so you know what to ask for

Before you chase a map, pull the Porcha for the Khatian. It gives you the Dag numbers exactly as the department writes them, and those are what any map request is keyed on. It also tells you which settlement you are reading, which in Bengal is the difference between finding your plot and concluding it does not exist.

Note the district, block and mouza as the Porcha spells them, and find the mouza's J.L. number. A request against the right name in the wrong block comes back with a plausible-looking sheet for somebody else's land, and nothing on the sheet will tell you so.

Getting the map sheets

1. Note the district, block, mouza and J.L. number exactly as the Porcha spells them.
2. Ask for the mouza map sheets covering your Dag numbers. Where a mouza runs to several sheets, ask for all the sheets your Dags fall on, not just the first: a boundary you care about is often on the next sheet.
3. Ask for the sheets under both settlements if your deed is old. An RS Dag and an LR Dag are the same ground under different numbers, and you may need the map under the numbering your document uses.
4. Check every sheet before you leave: the mouza name, the J.L. number, the sheet number, and that your Dag is legible on it. A sheet that is unreadable at the edge is the one you will need when you come to line it up.

When the number in your deed is not on the map

This is the ordinary Bengal problem and it is almost never a missing plot. The Revisional Settlement numbered the mouza one way and the later Land Reforms settlement renumbered it, so a deed written against an RS Dag will not match the LR record the current Porcha shows. Some Porchas carry both as Sabek and Hal columns, which is the quickest way to pair them. Where they do not, the BL&LRO holds both sets and is the office that reconciles them.

When the boundary itself is the question

If what you actually need is the boundary fixed on the ground, because a neighbour disagrees or because the sheet and the fence do not match, that is a measurement request rather than a map request, and it goes through the BL&LRO. Assemble your sheets first anyway: an Amin works faster when the whole holding is in front of them as one drawing rather than four.

Joining the sheets you end up with

Almost nobody ends up with one sheet. A Khatian with Dags on both sides of a sheet line is two sheets; a large mouza is four or five; land on a mouza edge needs sheets from both mouzas. Each one shows a fragment, and the boundary you care about is usually the line where two of them meet.

Joining them is ordinary work: line the sheets up along the boundaries they share, so the lines that continue across the join actually continue. Done by hand it is fiddly; done on a canvas that snaps edges together it takes a few minutes, and the result is one continuous map you can print, send to a valuer, or take to the BL&LRO.