A gaj is a yard. When a plot in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Jaipur or Lucknow is advertised as 100 gaj, the number is square gaj — square yards — so it is 900 square feet. The conversion is exact and easy to do in your head: multiply gaj by 9 to get square feet, divide square feet by 9 to get gaj.
Written out in full, as on some records and in Hindi, it is varg gaj for square yards and varg feet for square feet — varg means square — and the numbers do not change: 100 varg gaj is 900 varg feet.
That single factor of nine is worth knowing because it is where plot sizes and construction quotes stop agreeing with each other. Land in north India is sold by the gaj; building work is quoted by the square foot. A 200 gaj plot is 1,800 square feet of land, and a builder quoting ₹1,800 per square foot for a ground floor covering 60% of it is quoting for 1,080 square feet, not 1,800.
The sizes you will actually see
- 50 gaj — 450 sq ft, a small plot or a shop.
- 100 gaj — 900 sq ft, the standard small residential plot in north Indian colonies.
- 200 gaj — 1,800 sq ft.
- 500 gaj — 4,500 sq ft, about a tenth of an acre.
A plot measured in feet goes the other way: a 30 × 40 ft plot is 1,200 sq ft, which is 133.33 gaj, and a 40 × 60 ft plot is 2,400 sq ft, 266.67 gaj. Land sold in lakhs of square feet divides the same way — 1 lakh sq ft (100,000) is 11,111.11 gaj, a little under 2.3 acres. The table headed “The other way round”, further down, runs from 100 sq ft to 1 lakh.
Gaj and the other units on a deed
One acre is 4,840 gaj, and one bigha is 1,600 gaj in the states that use the 14,400 sq ft bigha. A square metre is a little under 1.2 gaj, so a 100 m² flat is about 120 gaj — which is why a carpet area in metres and a plot size in gaj are not numbers to compare by eye.
The gaj is the same everywhere, unlike the bigha, which is a different size in every state that uses it.