Bigha, guntha, cent: land units explained

By Parish Rao · 25 August 2026 · 5 minute read

A seller quotes a price per bigha. A document states the area in guntha. Your bank wants square feet. All three describe the same land, and getting the conversion wrong is a genuinely expensive mistake.

The problem in one sentence

Some Indian land units are standard everywhere, and some change depending on where you are standing.

The units that are fixed

• Square foot. The same everywhere. Most commonly used for built property.
• Square yard. Nine square feet. Common for plots in north India.
• Square metre. The official unit in most government schedules, including circle rate tables.
• Acre. 43,560 square feet. Standard across India and internationally.
• Hectare. Ten thousand square metres, roughly 2.47 acres. Used in official land records.
• Guntha. Widely treated as 1,089 square feet, or one fortieth of an acre. Common in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
• Cent. Widely treated as 435.6 square feet, one hundredth of an acre. Common in the south.
• Ground. Commonly 2,400 square feet in Tamil Nadu.

The unit that is not fixed, and catches people out

Bigha. There is no single national bigha. Its size differs between states and sometimes between districts within a state. A bigha in one region can be substantially different from a bigha a few hundred kilometres away.

The same warning applies to katha or cottah, and to marla and kanal in the north west. All vary regionally.

So a price quoted per bigha means nothing until you know which bigha. If you take a number from a website without checking the local definition, you can misjudge a deal badly.

How to protect yourself

1. Insist on square feet or square metresFor any number that matters, ask the seller to state the area in a fixed unit as well.
2. Take the area from the documentNot from conversation. Revenue records usually state it in official units.
3. Get it measuredDocuments can be old and boundaries move. Measurement on site is part of any proper valuation.
4. Confirm the local definitionIf a variable unit is used, confirm what it means in that specific district, in writing.

Built property has its own confusion

For flats and houses the trap is different. Carpet, built up and super built up are three different areas for the same home, and the gap between them can be large. That one is covered in carpet versus built up versus super built up.

Why a valuer measures rather than reads

Because both problems, variable units and outdated documents, land in the same place: the area on paper is not always the area you own.

Every valuation we do includes measurement on site, and where that differs from the document, the report says so. It is better to discover a shortfall while you are still deciding than after you have paid.

Read how land is valued, or send us the document and we will tell you what area it actually describes.