How to tell a survey number from a gat numberसर्व्हे नंबर आणि गट नंबर

Every village in Maharashtra was surveyed for land revenue, and each holding in that original survey was given a number, the सर्व्हे नंबर (survey number). The number with the village name is how the revenue record points at a piece of land, and older deeds and family memory use it.

Many villages then went through consolidation. Under the Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947, the scattered fragments held by one person were regrouped into single blocks, and the blocks were numbered afresh as गट नंबर (gat number). In a village with a consolidation scheme, the current 7/12 is issued against the gat number, and the gat number is the working identifier from then on.

The old survey numbers do not vanish. They stay in the deeds registered before consolidation, in the consolidation scheme records at the taluka land records office, and in the way people describe their own fields. That is why one piece of land can honestly be called by two numbers by two people in the same conversation.

Neither number says anything about ownership on its own. What the record says about the land sits in the extract issued against the number, which is the subject of reading a 7/12 extract.

A हिस्सा (hissa) is a subdivision of a survey number or a gat number. When a holding is partitioned among heirs, or a part of it is sold, the revenue record splits the parent number and gives each part a hissa number. It is written after an oblique: 12/1, 12/2, and where a subdivision was itself divided, 12/1अ.

Each hissa number has its own extract, its own area and its own holders, and the parent number covers all of them together. So a deed or an advertisement that names only the parent number does not say which part of the land is in question. Read the number as printed on the current extract, hissa included, and check that the area on that extract matches the area being sold.

Hissa numbering also moves: a fresh partition creates new hissa numbers and closes old ones, so an old extract can cite a hissa the record no longer keeps open.

In towns and cities where a city survey has been carried out, the record of the land is the मालमत्ता पत्रक (malmatta patrak), the Property Card, and not the 7/12. It is kept by the City Survey Office and keyed to a नगर भूमापन क्रमांक (nagar bhumapan kramank), the city survey number, written in practice as the CTS number. The city survey and the Property Card rest on the city survey provisions of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966.

A Property Card does for urban land what the 7/12 does for village land: it shows the holder, the area, the tenure and the entries recorded against the property. A request for a 7/12 in a city survey area often comes back with nothing.

Where a city survey covered land that had been village land, the same ground carries a CTS number and an older survey or gat number at once, and the two look nothing alike. A seller may quote whichever suits the document in hand. Ask for both, and ask the City Survey Office which older number the CTS number came from.

A plot number in a sanctioned non-agricultural layout, in a MIDC industrial estate, in a CIDCO node or in a town planning scheme is a planning number, given by a planning or development authority to describe a piece of a sanctioned plan. A plot number on its own reaches no revenue record.

Every such plot was carved out of a survey number or a gat number, and that parent number is the way back to the revenue record and to the registration indexes. Ask for the sanctioned layout plan, which shows the plot inside the parent number, along with the order that sanctioned the layout. With only a plot number and a village name, the plot locator is a place to start.

A town planning scheme goes further: inside the scheme area the final plot numbers take the place of the original survey numbers. The scheme records show which original numbers went into each final plot, and that is the document to ask for.

The same land can appear under several of these at once.

Mismatched numbers show up when documents are compared against each other. This order keeps the comparison cheap. A satellite map view, such as the one on the map, helps where you are checking shape and neighbours.

1. Read the number and the village exactly as printed on the current 7/12 or Property Card, including the hissa and any Devanagari letter in it.
2. Ask which system the village uses, survey numbers or gat numbers, and whether a consolidation scheme was carried out there.
3. If the deed names a different number from the record, ask the talathi or the taluka land records office for the consolidation record that ties the old survey number to the gat number.
4. Confirm the hissa, and check that the area shown for that hissa matches the area in the deal.
5. Find the parcel on the village map published on MahaBhunaksha at mahabhunakasha.mahabhumi.gov.in, and check the shape and the neighbouring numbers against what you were shown on the ground.
6. For a plot in a layout, get the sanctioned layout plan and the parent survey or gat number, then read the revenue record for that parent number.

If two numbers cannot be tied to each other, that is a question for the talathi, the land records office and a licensed advocate before any payment. The wider record check sits in verifying a land title in Maharashtra.