A bigha is not one size. It is a village measure that the British revenue settlements froze at different values in different provinces, and those values are still what land records use. Before converting anything, find out which state’s records your plot sits in — the converter above asks you first, and the number changes under your hands when you answer.
What each region’s records say
- West Bengal — 14,400 sq ft. One bigha is 20 katha, and a katha is 720 square feet. That is the chain the state registry works in, down to the chatak of 45 square feet.
- Assam — 14,400 sq ft. Same total, different chain: one bigha is 5 katha of 2,880 square feet, each katha 20 lessa of 144. Guwahati’s building bylaws size plots by it, calling 1,338 m² a bigha. The central MDDS annexure lists a different Assam chain — a katha of 720 square feet and a bigha of 2,880 — so an Assam deed is worth reading twice.
- Haryana, in the bigha-biswa districts — 9,075 sq ft. The record is “4 bigha 16 biswa = 1 acre”, which makes a bigha 9,075 square feet and a biswa 453.75. Most Haryana and Punjab land is written in kanal and marla instead.
- Bangladesh — about 14,400 sq ft. 20 katha of roughly 720 square feet, by the Ministry of Land’s own table, which also says three bighas is about an acre. It marks these approximate, and so do we.
Not here yet, and why
Rajasthan’s bigha comes in two sizes — 27,225 square feet by the Shahjahani jarib of 165 feet and 17,424 by the Gantari jarib of 132 — and we have found only one document that states them. Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh bighas vary by district in ways no single source we could open pins down. A unit this expensive to get wrong is worth leaving out until there is a document to point at; the moment there is one, it appears here with its source and the date it was read.
What to do with a deed in front of you
Look for the sub-unit, then the state. A katha is not one size either:
- West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bangladesh: a katha of about 720 square feet, 20 to the bigha.
- Assam: a katha of 2,880 square feet, 5 to the same 14,400 sq ft bigha.
- Bihar: a kattha of about 1,361 square feet around Patna, by the state’s own revenue glossary, which says it varies by district. Read with the Bengal katha, a Bihar deed comes out at about half its real area, so multiply a Bihar kattha count by about 1,361 instead.
If it says biswa, count 20 to the bigha and you are in the Haryana system, where the bigha is about 37% smaller (9,075 sq ft against 14,400). If it says neither, the survey number’s area in hectares on the record of rights is the figure to trust, and the calculator will turn that into square feet.