RTC, khata, mutation and EC: what each one actually proves.

Checked on 8 August 2026. Rates, rules and portals in Karnataka change, sometimes at short notice. Treat this as an orientation, not as advice on your own transaction, and have your advocate confirm anything that decides money.

RTC, or pahani

The Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops is the working document of agricultural land in Karnataka. It records the survey number, the extent, who holds it, what is grown, and the nature of the tenure. On a coffee estate it is the first document to ask for and the one you will refer to most.

What it does not do is prove ownership in the way a title deed does. It is a revenue record. It is strong evidence and its absence is a serious warning, but a name on an RTC is not the end of a title investigation.

Mutation register

Mutation, often called MR, is the record of how the holding passed from one name to the next: sale, inheritance, partition, gift. Read as a sequence, it is the chain of how the land came to the person now offering it to you.

Gaps and abrupt changes in that chain are worth understanding before you go further. On family plantation land held across generations, partition entries are where most complications sit.

Khata

Khata is the property tax account: it identifies who is liable to pay tax on the property to the local body. An A-khata is a regular, fully recognised account. A B-khata indicates a property the local body records for tax but treats as irregular, and it carries real consequences for borrowing and for building.

Khata is about tax and municipal recognition. Like the RTC, it is not proof of title.

Encumbrance certificate

The EC lists registered transactions against the property over a period: sales, mortgages, charges. Ask for 30 years rather than the 13 that is commonly offered. The extra years cost very little and they are where old mortgages and forgotten partitions surface.

An EC shows what was registered. It cannot show what was never registered, which is precisely why an EC alone is not a title search.

What none of them prove

Taken together these four tell you who the revenue and tax records point at, and what has been registered against the land. They do not settle whether the seller has clean, marketable title, whether there is a live dispute, whether the land is restricted or granted tenure, or whether the boundary on the ground matches the boundary on paper.

That is what an advocate's title opinion and a surveyor are for. On plantation land, walk the boundary with the surveyor. Boundary disagreement with a neighbouring estate is among the most common and most bitter problems in this district.