Solar land deals rarely die on price. They die on paper: an inheritance nobody partitioned, a loan cleared in cash but never cleared on the record, a parcel that turns out to be granted land. All of it is findable before money moves, if you know which records to read. Here are the fourteen, grouped by what they prove.
Group 1: Who actually owns this land
- RTC / Pahani (Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops). Karnataka’s core revenue record, year by year, on the Bhoomi portal. Check at least 30 years. The recorded owner must be your seller; a deceased grandfather still on the RTC means the mutation chain is incomplete.
- Mutation register extracts (MR). Every change of ownership (sale, inheritance, partition) should have a corresponding mutation entry. A sale deed without a mutation is a transaction the revenue record never absorbed.
- Title deeds for 30 years. The registered documents behind each transfer. Read them against the mutations; the two chains must tell the same story.
- Family tree (vamsha vruksha) and legal-heir certificates. The single most common deal-killer. Every heir with a potential claim must either be on the deed or have released their share. A married daughter omitted in 1994 has the same rights as anyone else on that record.
- Partition deed, where the land came through inheritance.“Understood between brothers” is not a partition. Only a registered partition (or court decree) divides ownership.
Group 2: What claims sit on it
- Encumbrance Certificate (EC), 30 years. From the Kaveri registration system: every registered mortgage, charge and transaction against the parcel. An uncleared 2009 crop loan shows up here, and stops a 2026 project.
- Loan clearance / release deeds.Where the EC shows a charge, insist on the registered release, not the seller’s assurance that it was repaid.
- Land revenue tax receipts. Small in value, useful as evidence of continuous possession and an uncontested record.
- Litigation search. Civil suits, injunctions and revenue appeals touching the survey number, checked at the jurisdictional courts and revenue offices. Cases do not always surface in the EC.
Group 3: Where its boundaries actually are
- 11E sketch. The certified sketch for the portion being sold, mandatory for registering a part of a survey number in Karnataka.
- Survey / hissa maps and physical demarcation. The village map and hissa records, walked against the fence line. A two-acre disagreement between sketch and fence is not rare, and for a solar layout it matters.
Group 4: What the state says it can be used for
- Conversion status / RE fee receipt. Karnataka now largely auto-converts land use for renewable projects on payment of the prescribed fee: the queue is gone, the paperwork is not. See our conversion guide.
- PTCL and grant-land verification. Land granted under the Karnataka SC/ST (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) Act, 1978, plus inam and tenancy-occupancy lands, carry transfer restrictions that survive any sale deed. This check is non-negotiable; a PTCL claim can unwind a transaction decades later.
- Acquisition and notification search. Whether any part of the parcel falls under a government acquisition notification, forest or revenue-department claim, or a planned road/transmission corridor.
The red flags that end evaluations quickly
- Seller cannot produce the family tree, or discourages contacting other heirs.
- RTC owner and proposed seller differ, “mutation in process.”
- EC shows a charge with no registered release.
- Any hint of granted land in the chain.
- Price meaningfully below the area’s going rate: clean parcels do not trade cheap.
Who should verify
A land lawyer practising in the district (not just a city conveyancer), for the title chain and PTCL search; a licensed surveyor for demarcation; and your own visit to the village accountant and sub-registrar’s office. Budget weeks, not days, for every owner in the chain.
Or start from land where the work is already done. Every Ekrej parcel is listed with a complete dossier (title chain, records, restricted-category checks, conversion and evacuation status) open for your lawyer’s review before you commit anything.
This checklist is general information for Karnataka and not legal advice; requirements vary by district and parcel. Engage a qualified lawyer for any transaction.