In short (2026)
If the survey number on the sale deed does not match the survey number on the khata, do not pay and do not register until you know which document is wrong and why. The khata is a tax record. It never proves ownership, so the mismatch itself does not make the title bad. What makes it dangerous is the reason behind it: a clerical typo in the khata is fixable, but a deed that names a survey number the seller's own chain of title never carried means you are buying a different piece of land than the one being taxed. Treat the sale deed as the anchor, trace its survey number back through the mother deed, the encumbrance certificate and the revenue record, and only then decide whether this is a correction or a walk away.
In Bengaluru there is now a second, hard reason to fix it first. Since 1 October 2024, a valid e-Khata is mandatory to register a property sale on Kaveri 2.0, and a wrong e-Khata blocks the registration outright. So the mismatch is no longer just a legal risk you can paper over later. It can stop your registration on the day itself.
Why the two numbers exist in the first place
A property in Karnataka lives in three separate government systems, run by three separate departments, for three separate purposes. Confusing them is the single most common reason a buyer panics over a mismatch that is either harmless or fatal, without being able to tell which.
| Record | Kept by | What it actually proves |
|---|---|---|
| Sale deed and encumbrance certificate | Registration department (Kaveri) | The transaction. Who transferred the property to whom, and what charges are registered against it. |
| Survey number, RTC, mutation register | Revenue and survey department (Bhoomi) | The identity and extent of the land parcel, and who the revenue record shows in possession. |
| Khata / e-Khata | Local body (BBMP, now GBA, or the gram panchayat) | Who is liable to pay property tax on that unit. |
The survey number is the government's permanent name for a parcel of land. The khata is a municipal ledger that decides who gets the tax bill. They point at the same property but they are updated by different offices at different times, which is exactly why they drift apart.
This is not our opinion. It is settled law. The Karnataka High Court has held that a khata does not confer any right, title or interest in a property, and that it is relevant only for paying corporation taxes. In Dr. S. Shobha v. The Commissioner, BBMP (2021), the Court went further and held that BBMP cannot issue a khata without verifying the legality of the documents produced, and that where there is doubt or dispute, it must refuse and direct the applicant to obtain a declaration of title from a civil court. The Supreme Court has said the same about revenue and mutation entries for decades: in Balwant Singh v. Daulat Singh (1997) 7 SCC 137 it reaffirmed that such entries do not create or extinguish ownership and exist only for fiscal purposes.
Read that the right way. It does not mean the mismatch is unimportant. It means the khata cannot rescue a bad deed, and a clean khata cannot make a bad title good. The document that transfers ownership is the sale deed, and the survey number that matters is the one the deed and its chain actually carry.
The one distinction that tells you whether to worry
There are only two possibilities, and they have opposite consequences. The whole job is deciding which one you are looking at.
Possibility 1: the khata is wrong, the deed is right. This is the common, benign case. The seller's sale deed, the mother deed and the encumbrance certificate all name the same survey number, and only the khata carries a different one. That usually means the khata was raised on an old number, or the tax office made a data entry error, or the khata was never updated after a sub-division. The title is sound. It needs a khata correction, not a rescue.
Possibility 2: the deed is wrong, or names a parcel the chain never owned. This is the case that ends deals. The survey number on the sale deed does not appear in the seller's own upstream chain of title, or it points to a physically different parcel than the one you inspected. Here the deed conveys one piece of land while you believe you are buying another. No khata correction fixes that, because the problem is in the instrument that transfers ownership.
You cannot tell these two apart by looking at the khata. You tell them apart by anchoring on the deed and tracing backwards.
How to trace it before you pay
Do these in order. The point is not to collect documents. It is to find the single survey number that the seller's actual title runs on, and then check every other record against that one number.
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Start from the seller's sale deed, not the khata. Write down the survey number, the hissa (sub-plot) number, the extent and the four boundaries exactly as the deed states them. This is your reference. Everything else is measured against it.
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Pull the mother deed and the full chain. The survey number on the seller's deed should trace back, transfer by transfer, to the number the seller's own vendor acquired. If the number changes somewhere in the chain with no explanation, that is where the defect lives. A title search report exists precisely to surface a broken link like this.
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Cross-check the encumbrance certificate. A NIL or clean EC only means no registered transaction was found for the exact survey number and period you searched. Search the wrong number and the portal quietly returns nothing, which reads like a clean history but is really a search on the wrong parcel. Confirm the EC was pulled on the deed's survey number. Our Karnataka encumbrance certificate guide walks through this on Kaveri 2.0.
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Verify against the revenue record. Pull the current RTC (and, for revenue land, the mutation register) from the Bhoomi portal at landrecords.karnataka.gov.in, searching by district, taluk, hobli, village and survey number. The RTC tells you the current survey number, extent and the name the revenue record shows in possession. If the deed's number does not exist on Bhoomi at all, stop.
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Look for a sub-division, because that is the usual innocent explanation. When one survey number is split among owners, the parts get hissa numbers: Survey No. 47 becomes 47/1, 47/2 and so on. A khata raised before the split may still carry the parent number 47 while the deed correctly carries 47/2. The sub-division sketch (the 11E sketch or the tippani and akarband records) shows how the parent number was divided, which is what reconciles the two documents. A mismatch of this kind is almost always a records lag, not a title flaw.
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Only then read the khata. By now you know the correct survey number from the chain and the RTC. Check whether the khata simply carries a stale or mistyped number (Possibility 1) or a number that belongs to a different parcel altogether (Possibility 2). Our patta and khata guide and property mutation guide cover how the khata and mutation records are supposed to follow the deed, never lead it.
Fixing it: rectification deed versus khata correction
The remedy depends entirely on which document is wrong, which is why the tracing above has to come first.
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Error in the khata only, deed and chain are clean. Apply for a khata correction at the local body. On the e-Aasthi / e-Khata system this is done through the jurisdictional revenue officer, supported by the registered sale deed, the latest tax receipt and the EC. No new registration is needed because the title document is already correct.
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Error in the sale deed, but a genuine clerical one. A registered rectification deed is required, executed by both the seller and the buyer and registered like the original deed, correcting the survey number to the one the chain supports. Insist the seller executes this before the sale closes, not after you have paid, because a rectification deed needs the seller's cooperation and that cooperation evaporates once the money has moved.
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The deed names a parcel the seller never owned, or a different physical plot. This is not a correction. There is nothing to rectify, because the seller cannot rectify a title he does not hold. Walk away, or restructure the deal so you are buying the parcel the chain actually supports, at a price that reflects it.
The Bengaluru deadline you cannot ignore
If the property is inside Greater Bengaluru, the mismatch now has a registration consequence, not just a legal one. Since 1 October 2024, a valid e-Khata has been mandatory to register a property sale through Kaveri 2.0, and from 2025 this applies across the BBMP area, now under the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) that replaced BBMP in September 2025. e-Khata issuance is commonly blocked for exactly three reasons: outstanding property tax, a name mismatch between the sale deed and the tax records, and a survey number or property ID mismatch in older layouts that were never fully digitised.
The practical effect is blunt. A wrong e-Khata is worse than no e-Khata, because it is a live government record that contradicts the deed you are about to register, and the sub-registrar will not complete the registration until it is resolved. So a survey number mismatch is no longer something to sort out in the months after buying. In Bengaluru it can stop the registration on the day, with your money already committed. Fix it before you pay, not after.
Frequently asked questions
The khata number is different from my sale deed but the survey number matches. Is that a problem? Usually not by itself. The khata number is just the tax account identifier and can differ from every other number on the property. What must reconcile is the survey number, the extent and the boundaries. Confirm those agree across the deed, the RTC and the EC, and get the khata number corrected for cleanliness.
Is a survey number mismatch on the sale deed enough to make the title bad? No, and yes. The mismatch alone does not make the title bad, because a khata never conferred title in the first place. But if the mismatch exists because the deed names a survey number the seller's chain never carried, then the deed conveys the wrong parcel and the title is defective. The mismatch is a symptom. You have to find the cause.
Can I just get a rectification deed later after buying? Only if the error is a clerical one in the deed and the seller cooperates. A rectification deed must be signed by both parties and registered. Once you have paid in full, you have lost your only leverage to make the seller sign it. Get it done before the balance changes hands.
Which record should I trust, the khata, the RTC or the sale deed? For ownership, the sale deed and its chain, always. The RTC and mutation register show possession and the revenue picture. The khata shows who pays tax. None of the revenue or municipal records confer title on their own, so when they disagree, the registered deed chain governs and the others should be corrected to match it.
The seller says it is just a typo and BBMP will fix it. Should I believe him? Trust the trace, not the assurance. If the deed, mother deed, EC and RTC all carry the same survey number and only the khata differs, he is probably right and it is a correction. If the number breaks somewhere in his chain of title, it is not a typo, and no municipal office can fix a defect that sits in the deed.
Do not decide this on your own
A survey number mismatch is the most common real defect we see, and it is also the one buyers most often talk themselves past, because the seller has a confident explanation and the paperwork looks otherwise complete. The difference between a harmless records lag and a fatal wrong parcel is invisible unless someone reads the full chain, the EC on the correct number, the RTC, the mutation history and the sub-division sketch together, and reconciles them against one another.
That is exactly what a proper title investigation does, and it is what a bank's panel advocate would do before lending against the property. Before you pay advance on a property where the survey numbers do not line up, get the title verified so you know whether you are looking at a correction or a deal to walk away from. For the wider checklist on a Karnataka purchase, see our property due diligence guide for Karnataka.