How to get your village map and FMB sheets in Telangana

Telangana keeps two different things about your land, and they come from two different places. The Pahani tells you who holds the survey number and how big it is. The map (the village cadastral sheet, and the FMB sketch for an individual survey number) shows where it sits and where its boundaries run. People go looking for the second and are handed the first, which is why so many searches for a Telangana village map end at a text record.

What you are actually asking for

Village cadastral map

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

FMB sketch

The Field Measurement Book sketch for one survey number: its surveyed shape with measurements along each boundary. One sketch covers one number, so a holding across several numbers means several sketches.

Sethwar

The original settlement record for the village, listing each survey number with its extent. Not a map, but the document a disagreement about extent is ultimately settled against.

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

Before you chase a map, pull the Pahani for the survey number. It gives you the exact survey and sub-division numbers as the department writes them, 45/2 rather than 'about forty-five', and those are what any map request is keyed on. A request with the wrong sub-division comes back with the wrong sheet, and you will not know until you look at it.

Land records for agricultural land are maintained through the state's integrated portal. It has been operated as Dharani, and successor arrangements have been announced under the Bhu Bharathi name; which one your district is on decides what the screens look like, not what you are entitled to ask for.

Getting the map sheets

1. Note the district, mandal and revenue village exactly as the Pahani spells them. Village names repeat across mandals in Telangana, and the mandal is what disambiguates them.
2. Ask for the cadastral sheets for that village covering your survey numbers. Where a village runs to several sheets, ask for all the sheets your numbers fall on, not just the first: a boundary you care about is often on the next sheet.
3. Ask separately for the FMB sketch of each survey number you hold. The village map shows the number in context; the FMB shows its measurements.
4. Check every sheet before you leave: the village name, the sheet number, and that your survey number 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 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 survey request, not a map request. In Telangana this is the F-line: revenue survey staff come out and demarcate the parcel's limits. The sheets are still worth assembling first, because the surveyor works faster when you can show the whole holding in one drawing.

Joining the sheets you end up with

Almost nobody ends up with one sheet. A holding across three survey numbers is three FMB sketches; a large village is four or five cadastral sheets; land on a village edge needs sheets from both villages. 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 mandal office.