Know what the government record actually says about a property — including what it does not.

No, and the Supreme Court has said so in terms. In K. Gopi, decided on 7 April 2025, the Court held that “the registering officer is not concerned with the title held by the executant” and “has no adjudicatory power to decide whether the executant has any title”. It struck down a state rule that had required a Sub-Registrar to satisfy himself about the seller’s title, declaring it ultra vires the Registration Act 1908.

The registration office records that a document was executed and presented. It does not investigate whether the person executing it owned anything. This is not a failure of the system — it is what the system is for. A registered deed is evidence that a transaction happened; it is not a finding that the transaction was one the seller was entitled to make.

Which is why “it is registered” is the least reassuring sentence in Indian property. The rule the Court struck down was a Tamil Nadu rule, so the declaration of invalidity is local; the holding about what a registering officer does is general, and it applies in Dehradun exactly as it applies in Chennai.

It raises a presumption, and a presumption is not a proof. Section 44 of the Land Revenue Act says entries in the annual register “shall, until contrary is proved, be presumed to be true”, and section 57 says the same of the record-of-rights. Both are rebuttable. Someone who can prove the entry wrong wins.

Two further provisions tell you what the record is actually deciding. Section 40 says disputes about entries “shall be decided on the basis of possession” — possession, not ownership. Section 40A saves the title suit: no order about the register bars a suit in a competent court for relief on the basis of a right in the holding. The revenue officer is not adjudicating title and the Act says so.

The Supreme Court has put it more bluntly. In Bhimabai Mahadeo Kambekar (2019) the Court held that mutation entries “neither create nor extinguish title” and “do not have any presumptive value of title”. In Jitendra Singh (2021) it held that revenue entries serve a fiscal purpose — the payment of land revenue — and confer no ownership, and that a disputed title belongs in a civil court.

So the honest description of what we sell is this: we read what the record says and we tell you exactly that, together with what the record is not capable of settling. Anyone selling you a verdict is selling you something the record cannot give them either.

Mutation is the updating of the revenue register after a transfer or a death. Section 34 requires a person obtaining possession by succession or transfer to report it to the Tehsildar. Section 35 requires the Tehsildar to make such inquiry as appears necessary and, if the transfer “appears to have taken place”, to direct the register to be amended.

Read that standard again: appears to have taken place. It is an administrative check that something happened, not a judicial finding that it was valid. That is precisely why the Supreme Court holds that mutation neither creates nor extinguishes title.

What mutation does do is matter practically. An unmutated purchase leaves the seller’s name on the record for the next buyer to find, and the next buyer’s searcher to rely on. A gap between the deed and the entry is one of the most common things we find, and it is worth knowing about before you pay rather than after.

We do not publish a mutation timeline. Every “forty-five days” figure we could find traced back to a property portal rather than a rule, and we could locate no Uttarakhand government order prescribing a period.

Because the revenue record has nowhere to put it. It is a register of persons cultivating or otherwise occupying land, and its disputes are settled on possession. There is no encumbrance column, and recording charges is not one of its functions.

Charges are registered elsewhere. Section 20 of the SARFAESI Act 2002 created the Central Registry — CERSAI — for registering securitisation and the creation of security interests, and section 23 requires the particulars of every such transaction to be filed with it. Section 20(4) is worth knowing: the Central Registry is “in addition to and not in derogation of” the Registration Act and the other charge-registration laws. It replaced nothing.

And it has a hard limit that almost nobody mentions. The register became operational on 31 March 2011. A charge created before that date was never registrable there, so no CERSAI search can return it. The register was widened by sections 26B to 26E, in force from 24 January 2020, to cover creditors other than secured creditors, tax recovery authorities and attachment orders — and a registered secured creditor now takes priority over other debts including government dues.

This is one of the four things our records report does not cover, and it is named as such in the report itself rather than left for you to discover.

Start with section 1(2), because it decides whether the rest of the Act reaches your plot at all. The Act extends to the whole of Uttarakhand “except — the areas included and to be included from time to time in any Municipal Corporation, Nagar Panchayat, Nagar Palika Parishad and Cantonment Board limits”. Inside those boundaries, none of what follows applies. Most coverage of this law omits the carve-out entirely, and it is the single fact that most often changes the answer.

Outside them, section 154(4) requires the buyer to give the Sub-Registrar an affidavit that he “or his family has not purchased more than 250 sq meters of land elsewhere in State for residential purposes during lifetime”. It is a lifetime cap, counted per family, across the whole state — not per transaction and not per district. If the affidavit is false the transfer is void and the consequences of section 167 follow.

Agricultural and horticultural purchase is narrower still. It is available with prior sanction of the State Government “only in Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts”, on an affidavit that the land will be used for that purpose. If the use later changes, the transfer is void and section 167 follows again. In the other eleven districts that route is not open.

The Act does other things too: section 154(2-A) lets the State authorise larger transfers for industry, Ayush, education, health, horticulture and tourism against a land essential certificate; section 154(5) routes suspected contraventions to the Assistant Collector; section 156 extends leases up to thirty years.

Some things we could not establish and therefore do not state: whether the old 12.5-acre ceiling survives, whether District Magistrates retain an approval power, and the statutory definition of the restricted buyer, which is not in the amending Act. If you have seen those asserted confidently elsewhere, ask where.

No, and Himachal’s is much stricter. This is where the idea began. Section 118 of the Himachal Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reforms Act 1972 makes no transfer of land valid in favour of a person who is not an agriculturist.

The test is not residence. Section 2(2) defines an agriculturist as a person who cultivates land personally in an estate situated in Himachal Pradesh. The phrase “bona fide Himachali”, which appears in nearly every article on the subject, is not in the Act. Someone born in Shimla who has never held and cultivated land there is a non-agriculturist for this purpose.

Permission exists and is not a local formality. The application is made under section 118(2)(h) with Rule 38-A in Form LR-XIV; the Collector recommends and the State Government decides. Section 118(3) directs the Registrar not to register a transfer made without it. Section 118(3-D) makes an unpermitted transfer void from the beginning, with the land vesting in the State free of all encumbrances — including whatever has been built on it.

As of August 2026 section 118 stands unamended. The 2025 amendment Bill was introduced on 2 December 2025 and referred to a Select Committee on 5 December 2025 after a deadlock in the House; we have found no report of it being passed. Check the position on the day. That includes checking it against this page.

Not in Uttarakhand, and it is worth being told that plainly. The searchable “prohibited property list” people have heard of is a Telangana and Andhra Pradesh mechanism, built on a state-inserted section 22A of the Registration Act. We searched specifically for a Uttarakhand equivalent and found none.

Here the restrictions live inside the Act rather than in a list you can look up. Section 132 names land in which bhumidhari rights do not accrue — pasture land, land covered by water, land declared for plantation or groves, land held for a public purpose. Section 157-A provides that a bhumidhar belonging to a Scheduled Caste has no right to transfer land to a person outside it “except with the previous approval of the Collector”.

These are not theoretical. In August 2018 the Uttarakhand High Court directed the State not to allot pasture land, land covered by water or riverbed land, ordered an inquiry into allotments already made in breach of section 132(a), and required unlawful allotments to be cancelled. In April 2026 the Supreme Court in Babu Singh held that pattas founded on an invalid re-categorisation of public-utility land were “void ab initio”, and that a Sub-Divisional Officer lacks authority to change the category of the land at all.

What that means for a buyer: the question is not “is this plot on a list”. It is what category the record puts the land in, and whether anything in its history shows that category being changed by someone who could not change it. That is a question about the record, and it is answerable.

It can decide the whole question. In June 2026 the Supreme Court, in a Haridwar consolidation matter, held that a transfer contravening section 154 of the unamended Act was voidable at the instance of the Gaon Sabha, not void from the beginning. The consequence was exposure to ejectment proceedings, not automatic nullification.

The 1981 amendment changed that, making such transfers void with automatic vesting in the State — but the Court held that the amendment, “being substantive in nature and affecting accrued rights and liabilities, must therefore operate prospectively”. It did not reach a deed executed in 1957.

The Court also held that consolidation authorities cannot brush aside a voidable sale deed unless a competent civil court has cancelled it, and that a registered deed “carries a formidable presumption of validity, sanctity, and genuineness which cannot be lightly brushed aside”.

So which version of the section was in force on the day each deed in the chain was executed is not a technicality. It is the difference between a defect that is fatal and one that is not, and it is a matter of dates on documents — which is exactly what a chain-of-custody report is made of.

The Department’s own published schedule gives, for a sale deed: stamp duty of 5%, and for a female buyer 3.75% up to ₹25 lakh and 5% above that. The registration fee is 2% of the value or consideration, with a maximum chargeable fee of ₹25,000.

Two honest caveats. First, the schedule carries no date and no version number. It is live on the Department’s site and was uploaded to the government CDN in March 2025; that is what we can say, and we would rather say it than imply the figures were confirmed this morning. Second, the schedule addresses a “female buyer” and is silent on a joint male-and-female purchase, so we do not publish a joint rate. Ask the Sub-Registrar, or your advocate.

One thing to keep separate: the widely circulated 2025 story about a 1% stamp duty concession for women up to ₹1 crore is Uttar Pradesh, not Uttarakhand. The two states are routinely conflated on property sites, and the statutes have diverged since 2015.

One thing on that schedule that almost nobody mentions. A female buyer pays no stamp duty at all — a 100% rebate — in five districts: Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Pithoragarh, Rudraprayag and Bageshwar. If a purchase in those districts can properly be made in a woman's name, that is the whole duty saved, and it is written into the Department's own fee schedule rather than being a concession somebody has to grant you.

Other rates from the same schedule, since people ask: gift to a family member 1%, family partition 0.25% to 0.5%, general gift 5%, exchange 5% on the higher value, and a will attracts no stamp duty and a ₹100 registration fee. Transfers between specified family relations are charged at 0.25% with a maximum of ₹1,000.

The circle rate — collector rate, DM rate — is the minimum value the state will accept for a parcel. Duty is charged on the higher of the circle rate and the price written in the deed, so the rate is a floor under the tax and not a valuation of your plot.

Section 47-A is what gives it teeth. If the value set out in the instrument is below the minimum determined under the rules, the registering officer requires the deficit duty; if it is not paid, the instrument is referred to the Collector, who determines market value after an inquiry. The Collector may act on a reference or of his own motion within four years of registration, and between four and eight years with the State Government’s prior permission. On finding an instrument under-stamped he may require the deficit and a penalty not exceeding four times the proper duty. Where the instrument is not produced, the duty and penalty may be levied on a copy.

Rule 4 of the valuation rules says the Collector of the district shall fix these minimum values “biennially, as far as possible in the month of August”, and shall have the statement posted outside the registration office. In practice Dehradun’s rates were revised on 5 October 2025, the set before that having stood since 16 February 2023 — both dates taken from the Department’s own document library, which also holds the 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014-15, 2012-13 and 2007-09 lists.

We hold 3,268 priced rows from those schedules, and a report tells you which row applies to the parcel and what it says — including where the schedule is written by distance from a named road, which is where most people reading it themselves go wrong.

Section 143 of the 1950 Act is the declaration that converts land recorded as agricultural to non-agricultural use. In August 2025 the Supreme Court described the officer who makes it as the Assistant Collector in charge of the sub-division, and held it his duty to forward a copy of the declaration to the Sub-Registrar free of cost.

Here is the trap, and it is the reason this service does not sell you a buildability opinion. Conversion under section 143 and permission to build are different questions decided by different offices. Land can be fully converted and still sit inside a master-plan zone — held by the development authority, not the revenue office — where building is not permitted. A record showing a section 143 declaration tells you the revenue category changed. It does not tell you what the master plan says.

Note also that Uttar Pradesh renumbered all of this. The 1950 Act was repealed there by the U.P. Revenue Code 2006, in force from 18 December 2015; the section 143 equivalent is now section 80 and the old section 154 is section 89. In Uttarakhand the 1950 Act remains in force — the state amended it in 2025, and a repealed Act cannot be amended.

Land records: bhulekh.uk.gov.in. The district administration states the position in its own words — the details on Bhulekh are “for viewing only”. For an official copy of the record of rights you go to the Tehsil Land Records Computer Centre, at ₹15 for the first page and ₹5 for each page after it. Bhulekh does not serve registered deeds, encumbrance information or charges.

Deeds and valuation: registration.uk.gov.in, the Department of Stamps and Registration, which publishes e-Search for registered documents, e-Valuation for duty, the GIS rate list of circle rates, e-Stamp and public data entry, along with the district-wise circle-rate documents and the Acts and rules themselves.

Projects and agents: ukrera.uk.gov.in, the Authority’s portal, launched in April 2025. And this is worth your attention: the older address, ukrera.org.in, is no longer under the Authority’s control. It now redirects to a link shortener serving a default domain-parking page. We checked it on 25 August 2026. Guides published this year still send buyers there. Treat only the .uk.gov.in address as official, and check the address bar before you type anything into a page that looks like a government form.

Plots are expressly covered. Section 3(1) forbids a promoter to “advertise, market, book, sell or offer for sale… any plot, apartment or building” in a real estate project in any planning area without registering the project with the Authority. The word “plot” is in the section.

Section 3(2)(a) exempts a project where the land to be developed does not exceed 500 square metres or the number of apartments does not exceed eight, across all phases. The appropriate Government may reduce those thresholds. Whether Uttarakhand has done so under its 2017 Rules we could not verify from a government source, so we do not tell you the state figure — which means, for a small plotted development near the exemption line, the question is worth asking the Authority directly.

What RERA does not do is tell you who owns the land. It is a regulator of promoters and projects. A registered project on land with a defective chain of title is still a registered project.

The most instructive case reported locally is from August 2023. The method was not a forged signature on a deed. It was the removal of original documents from the record room and their replacement with fake papers pasted into the old bound registers. The property was around 12.5 acres of tea estate land in Raipur, valued in the report at ₹11 crore. Among those arrested was an assistant in the Sub Registrar’s own office.

Sit with that for a moment, because it defeats the advice everyone gives. If the register itself has been altered, then inspecting the register does not save you. What finds it is the shape of the chain: an entry that does not follow from the one before it, a gap where a link should be, a document whose date does not sit with the instruments around it.

The scale is not small. In March 2025 it was reported that a Special Investigation Team had found forged documents covering roughly 2,000 acres in Dehradun, from 378 complaints, with 97 recommended for action and 70 cases registered; records dating back to 1948 had been tampered with. A recurring device was registering property in the names of the accused persons’ minor children, who then sell on to others — which is how a defect travels down a chain into the hands of a buyer who did nothing wrong.

There is also the long-running Golden Forest matter, land the Supreme Court has been supervising since 2011 after purchases were found to contravene section 154, and which is still reported being transferred using forged documents, impersonation and old powers of attorney.

None of this makes buying in Dehradun unwise. It makes reading the chain, rather than glancing at the current entry, the thing that matters.

Nine sections. The record of rights as it stands; where the property sits; what we found; what we checked and where; whether you are permitted to buy; what we found in detail; what the report does not include; the full chain of custody as an appendix; and every parcel on the same khata as an appendix.

What you will not get is a score, a grade, a traffic light or a “verified” badge. After K. Gopi it should be clear why: the record cannot settle title, so a number claiming to represent it is an invention. We would rather hand you the four things we could not find, named, than a green tick that quietly covers them.

Those four are constant and they are printed in the report: bank charges, the master-plan zone and therefore buildability, whether the plot is part of an approved layout, and whether a recorded right of way reaches it. A licensed advocate obtains those four and signs an opinion, which is the other tier.