How to read a Porcha, and what the Khatian and Dag actually mean

A Porcha is short and still manages to be confusing, because three of its numbers look interchangeable and none of them is. Getting them straight is what makes the difference between ordering the right map sheet and ordering somebody else's.

The three numbers

Dag number

One numbered piece of land in the mouza. This is what the map is drawn against, and what you quote when you ask for a sheet.

Khatian number

The account a holding sits under: one recorded owner, and every Dag they hold in that mouza. Where the Dag is a piece of land, the Khatian is a person's whole holding there.

J.L. number

The mouza's own identifier. It belongs to the village rather than to your land, and it is what stops the other two being read against the wrong mouza.

What the rest of the columns tell you

Against each Dag the Porcha records an area and a classification. The classification is worth as much attention as the owner's name: it is what decides whether the land is recorded as agricultural, and building on agricultural land without converting it is a problem that surfaces later, at sanction or at sale, rather than at purchase.

The Porcha may also record an interest that is not the owner's. A registered bargadar has recorded cultivating rights in the plot, and that entry survives on the record. It is one of the reasons a buyer in Bengal reads the whole Porcha rather than the first line of it.

RS and LR: the same ground, numbered twice

The Revisional Settlement surveyed and numbered mouzas afresh after the earlier Cadastral Survey, and the Land Reforms settlement renumbered them again. Older deeds are commonly written against RS Dag and RS Khatian numbers; the current record on the portal shows LR numbers. They rarely match, and neither is wrong.

Some Porchas print the former number alongside the current one as Sabek and Hal, which pairs them for you. Where yours does not, the BL&LRO for the block holds both sets and is the office that matches them. This is ordinary work in Bengal title searches rather than a sign that something has gone wrong.

Mutation, and what the record does not tell you

A Porcha shows who the record says holds the land, which is not the same as who bought it last. Mutation is what enters a transfer against the Khatian, and until it completes the record still names the previous holder regardless of what a sale deed says. Checking mutation status is the practical first step in verifying that a seller can sell.

From the record to the map

Once you have the Dag numbers off the Porcha you can ask for the map sheets they fall on. A Khatian whose Dags are scattered across the mouza means several sheets, and the boundary that matters is usually where two of them meet, so they are worth joining into one drawing before you take them anywhere.