Indian Land Area Converter

Convert between every Indian land unit — cent, guntha, bigha, katha, biswa, kanal, marla, ground, ankanam, dismil, chatak, gaj — and acres, hectares, square feet and square metres, with the state’s own definition of the bigha, katha and biswa rather than one national figure that does not exist.

How the conversion works

The units with one national value

The units that are NOT the same size everywhere

Why one bigha is not one size

Most of the units on this page are fixed. A cent is one hundredth of an acre, a guntha is one fortieth, a kanal is one eighth, a marla is one twentieth of a kanal, an ankanam is 72 sq ft and a gaj is simply a square yard. Those follow from the acre and the yard, both of which are exact numbers, so a cent in Kochi is a cent in Coimbatore and there is nothing to argue about.

The bigha, the katha and the biswa are different in kind. They are revenue units, defined by the land records of the place they are used in, and they were never standardised across India. A bigha is 27,225 sq ft in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and much of Rajasthan; 21,780 in Punjab and Haryana; 17,424 in western Rajasthan and the Uttarakhand plains; 14,400 in West Bengal and Assam; 12,000 in Madhya Pradesh; 8,712 in Himachal Pradesh; and 6,806.25 in the Uttarakhand hills and parts of western Uttar Pradesh. The largest is four times the smallest. A converter that picks one of those and calls it the bigha is wrong five times out of six, which is why this page makes you choose.

Pucca and kaccha. Where both terms are used, the pucca (or pakka) bigha is the full revenue bigha of 20 biswa and the kaccha bigha is a local fraction of it — a third, a quarter, or in western Uttar Pradesh five or six and two thirds biswa rather than twenty. The biswa itself stays the same size; it is the number of them in a bigha that changes. If a seller quotes bighas and a registry quotes square metres, the difference between a pucca and a kaccha reading is the difference between two plots and one.

It can vary below the state. Bihar is the clearest case: the katha is 1,361.25 sq ft around Patna and Arrah but 1,742.4 sq ft in Chhapra, 1,901.25 in Hajipur and 3,267 in Bettiah. No single Bihar figure is honest, and this page says so rather than averaging them. For the bigha in particular — the state values, the pucca and kaccha distinction and what to do when your deed disagrees — see the bigha converter. If you are comparing two listings quoted in different units, the land price per unit converter puts both on a price per square foot, which is the only basis on which they can be compared.

What governs, in the end. The registry works in square metres and the revenue record works in whatever the district’s own conversion notice says. Use this page to understand a listing and to sanity-check a deed; use the deed, the khasra or the patta for anything that is going to be signed. This page does the arithmetic. Where the answer carries a consequence — a dose, a structural load, a legal area, a medical measure — confirm it against the authority that governs it before relying on it.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators

References

1. International yard and pound agreement, 1959, as adopted in India by the Standards of Weights and Measures Act: the yard is 0.9144 m exactly. Every imperial figure on this page follows from it — 1 acre = 4,840 sq yd = 43,560 sq ft = 4,046.8564224 m², exactly.
2. Wikipedia, Cent (area) and Gunta and Ankanam and Ground (unit) (read 26 September 2026) — the cent as one hundredth of an acre, the guntha as one fortieth, the ankanam at 72 sq ft (Kittel, A Kannada-English Dictionary) and the ground at 2,400 sq ft.
3. United Nations Statistical Office, World Weights and Measures: Handbook for Statisticians, New York, 1966 — the source cited for the guntha of 1,089 sq ft. Not retrieved directly; the value is fixed independently by the 40-guntha acre, which is how it is derived here.
4. Wikipedia, Bigha (read 26 September 2026) — the state-by-state table used here, which carries a separate reference per row. The state revenue notifications behind those rows could not be retrieved, so the values are presented as the commonly published revenue figures and cross-checked for internal consistency instead (20 biswa or 20 katha to the bigha).
5. Wikipedia, Katha (unit) (read 26 September 2026) — district-level katha values, including the four different Bihar figures (Patna and Arrah 1,361.25 sq ft, Chhapra 1,742.4, Hajipur 1,901.25, Bettiah 3,267) that make a single state-wide Bihar number impossible to state honestly.
6. Wikipedia, Measurement of land in Punjab (read 26 September 2026), citing the Punjab Weight and Measurement Act 1976: sarsahi 30.25 sq ft, marla 272.25, biswa 1,089, kanal 5,445, bigha 21,780, killa 43,560. The Act itself could not be retrieved; the six values are mutually consistent and consistent with the 8-kanal acre.