A mutation entry is not title — and why purchasers keep forgetting it

Property Law · 28 May 2026 · 8 min read

A purchaser arrives with a jamabandi extract showing the seller’s name, and treats the matter as closed. It is not. Revenue records are maintained for the collection of revenue and the recording of possession. An entry in them raises a presumption about who is in possession and who pays; it does not confer, and cannot confer, ownership.

A title investigation worth the name covers four things. The devolution of title through registered instruments, traced back far enough to reach an unimpeachable root. The record of rights and the mutation history, read together, with every mutation matched to the instrument that caused it. Encumbrances — mortgages, attachments, injunctions, pending litigation affecting the land. And the physical identity of the land: khasra numbers, area and boundaries as recorded, compared against what is actually shown on site.

It is the fourth that is most often skipped and most often fatal. A deed that describes land accurately but conveys a parcel the seller does not physically hold produces litigation in possession within the year. Where the description in the deed diverges from the record of rights, the divergence must be resolved before execution, not afterwards by rectification.

Two further cautions particular to holdings in this region. Agricultural land carries restrictions that no amount of drafting cures, and co-sharer holdings are frequently sold as though partition had already taken place when it has not — a sale by one co-sharer of a specific parcel out of a joint holding conveys an undivided share, and nothing more definite.

The output of the exercise should be a written opinion that states what is clear, what is doubtful, and what would have to be done to cure the doubt. A purchaser is entitled to that document before parting with money, and a bank will ask for it in any event.