Lessa Converter – Lessa to Sq Ft, Katha, Bigha, Acre & Other Land Units

Written and fact-checked by Aadil Saif. Arithmetic independently re-verified · Last updated September 2026

Part of the India Land Unit Converter series.

The conversion is a whole number: a lessa is 144 square feet, which is a twelve-foot rod squared. The research went to two places instead. First, to the spelling: Assam's own High Court writes lecha about three times as often as lessa, and this series has been using the minority form, as had every converter consulted while this page was researched. Second, to a live building rule that fixes minimum plot sizes in lessa and glosses each one in square metres: it does that five times, two of the glosses are of the same quantity and differ, and one is out by a tenth. The page also closes a question this series has carried open since unit 8, about which part of Assam counts in chatak instead.

The Answer, First

1 lessa = 144 square feet = 16 square yards = 13.37803776 square metres exactly.

One lessa, in	Amount	Terminates?
Square feet	144	yes
Square yards	16	yes
Square metres	13.37803776	yes
Assam katha	0.05	yes
Assam bigha	0.01	yes
Acres	0.0033057851…	no
Hectares	0.001337803776	yes

Popular Lessa Conversions

Lessa	Square Feet	Square Meter	Katha (Assam)	Bigha (Assam)	Pura
1	144	13.37803776	0.05	0.01	0.0025
2	288	26.75607552	0.1	0.02	0.005
3	432	40.13411328	0.15	0.03	0.0075
5	720	66.8901888	0.25	0.05	0.0125
10	1,440	133.7803776	0.5	0.1	0.025
20	2,880	267.5607552	1	0.2	0.05
50	7,200	668.901888	2.5	0.5	0.125
100	14,400	1,337.803776	5	1	0.25
200	28,800	2,675.607552	10	2	0.5
500	72,000	6,689.01888	25	5	1.25
1,000	144,000	13,378.03776	50	10	2.5

A hundred lessa make an Assam bigha and twenty make an Assam katha, so the whole ladder is base ten and base twenty at once, which is why every figure in that column is a round decimal. The acre is the one that breaks: 302.5 lessa to the acre, a half, because an Assam bigha is 14,400 square feet and an acre is 43,560.

Three things that table does not say.

The unit is a rod squared, and the rod is prescribed. The Assam Land Records Manual sets a mauzadari jar of twelve feet; twelve squared is 144. The Katha page established that and this page does not restate it. What it adds is that the rod is the reason every conversion above terminates.

You are probably searching for the wrong spelling. In the Gauhati High Court, bound to katha to strip the noise, lecha returns 2,192 documents and lessa 717. This page is headed lessa anyway, and says so where it makes the finding.

One live rule states this unit in square metres five times and contradicts itself twice. Assam's 2014 building rules fix minimum plot sizes in lessa and gloss each in metric. One katha ten lessa is 402 square metres in one table and 400 in another, four sub-rules apart; and two katha ten lessa is given as 600 square metres when it is 668.9.

Convert The answer, first · To square feet, katha and bigha

Understand Lecha or lessa · Which part of Assam uses chatak · The 1964 acquisition form · The rule that converts it five times · Into Meghalaya · Where the lessa is in Indian law · Three mistakes

Check Searching for this unit · FAQ · Sources and method

Convert to a specific unit: Acre · Ankanam · Ares · Bigha · Biswa · Biswa Kacha · Cent · Chatak · Decimal · Dhur · Dismil · Gaj · Gajam · Ground · Guntha · Hectare · Kanal · Katha · Killa · Marla · Murabba · Nali · Perch · Pura · Square Centimeter · Square Feet · Square Inch · Square Karam · Square Kilometer · Square Meter · Square Mile · Square Yard

Every one of the other thirty-two units has a section on this page. Where two units are the same area their table would be identical, so the second section points at the first rather than repeating it.

Lessa to Other Units – Quick Conversion Formula

Every factor is a lessa's own size, 144 square feet, divided by the target unit's. To check any row by hand, take that number, divide, and compare.

Each one comes from a single anchor, the acre at 43,560 square feet, by exact fraction arithmetic. Where a factor recurs, the formula gives the fraction rather than a rounded decimal, because a rounded factor is a wrong instruction rather than an approximate one: the fraction is what has to be carried wherever the arithmetic must close.

Conversion	Formula	Status
Lessa to Acre	Lessa ÷ 302.5	Recurring
Lessa to Ankanam	Lessa × 2	Exact · Ankanam is regional. This row is the Standard; also 4
Lessa to Ares	Lessa × 0.1337803776	Exact
Lessa to Bigha	Lessa × 0.01	Exact · Bigha is regional. This row is the West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand; also 0.005289, 0.015868, 0.021157 and 5 more
Lessa to Biswa	Lessa ÷ 9.453125	Recurring · Biswa is regional. This row is the UP / Rajasthan pucca; also 0.165289, 0.317355, 0.330579
Lessa to Biswa Kacha	Lessa × 192/605	Recurring · Biswa Kacha is regional. This row is the Punjab / Haryana revenue; also 0.165289
Lessa to Cent	Lessa ÷ 3.025	Recurring
Lessa to Chatak	Lessa × 3.2	Exact
Lessa to Decimal	Lessa ÷ 3.025	Recurring
Lessa to Dhur	Lessa × 40	Exact · Dhur is regional. This row is the Tripura; also 2.115702
Lessa to Dismil	Lessa ÷ 3.025	Recurring
Lessa to Gaj	Lessa × 16	Exact
Lessa to Gajam	Lessa × 16	Exact
Lessa to Ground	Lessa × 0.06	Exact
Lessa to Guntha	Lessa ÷ 7.5625	Recurring
Lessa to Hectare	Lessa × 0.001337803776	Exact
Lessa to Kanal	Lessa ÷ 37.8125	Recurring · Kanal is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 0.032, 0.034843, 0.039506
Lessa to Katha	Lessa × 0.05	Exact · Katha is regional. This row is the Assam; also 0.105785, 0.2, 0.082645 and 2 more
Lessa to Killa	Lessa ÷ 302.5	Recurring
Lessa to Marla	Lessa ÷ 1.890625	Recurring · Marla is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 0.64, 0.696862, 0.790123 and 1 more
Lessa to Murabba	Lessa ÷ 7,562.5	Recurring · Murabba is regional. This row is the Punjab canal colony; also 0.000212
Lessa to Nali	Lessa ÷ 15	Recurring
Lessa to Perch	Lessa ÷ 1.890625	Recurring
Lessa to Pura	Lessa × 0.0025	Exact
Lessa to Square Centimeter	Lessa × 133,780.3776	Exact
Lessa to Square Feet	Lessa × 144	Exact
Lessa to Square Inch	Lessa × 20,736	Exact
Lessa to Square Karam	Lessa × 576/121	Recurring · Square Karam is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 5.76, 6.271758, 7.111111
Lessa to Square Kilometer	Lessa × 0.00001337803776	Exact
Lessa to Square Meter	Lessa × 13.37803776	Exact
Lessa to Square Mile	Lessa ÷ 193,600	Recurring
Lessa to Square Yard	Lessa × 16	Exact

Lessa or Lecha: the Spelling in the Record Is Not the Spelling in the Converters

Counted in the Gauhati High Court, which is the court for Assam, each spelling run singly and bound to katha so that names and places are stripped out:

Spelling	Documents
lecha	2,192
lessa	717
chatak	149
lesa	2
chittack	0
chittak	0

indiankanoon.org, doctypes:gauhati, each query paired with "katha", 10 September 2026.

The form the record prefers is lecha, by about three to one. This series has used lessa from unit 1, and so did the converter pages consulted while this one was researched. No survey of converters was run and none is claimed. Neither spelling is wrong: they are transliterations of one Assamese word, and the unit is 144 square feet under either. But a reader who searches a land record, a cause list or a judgment for lessa will miss three quarters of what is there.

And this page keeps the title lessa, deliberately. It is the form readers arrive with, and since the two spellings name one unit, using it makes no claim about the record. The finding is advice about searching a database, not a correction to the page's own name, so the name stays and the advice sits here, where it is needed.

Unbound, lecha returns 2,670 in the same court, so 82% of it sits beside a katha: this is a land word, not a name.

Adding the two spellings needs the overlap taken out, and 85 documents in that court contain both. That 85 is court-bound but not katha-bound, so it is an upper bound on the overlap between the two bound counts rather than the overlap itself, which puts the union of the two spellings between 2,824 and 2,909.

This is the second unit in this series whose common spelling is its rarest. Five forms of that word were found for the Bengal unit, and the one every converter uses accounts for about 6% of its appearances in its own High Court. The method there (count each spelling singly, report the union, name the one the reader will actually meet) is that page's, and it is applied here rather than re-derived.

And the Calcutta spellings stop at the border

Chittack and chittak are the two commonest forms of the Bengal unit, with 253 and 221 documents in the Calcutta High Court. In the Gauhati High Court they return zero and zero. Assam writes that unit chatak, 149 times.

One word, one river valley apart, and not a single document crosses the spelling over.

Which Part of Assam Counts in Chatak: Measured, Not Assumed

Twenty lessa make an Assam katha. Sixteen chatak make a Bengal one. Both systems are used inside Assam, and this series has carried that as an unmeasured exception since unit 8, on the strength of a Supreme Court observation from 1996 that the Barak Valley (Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi) counts in chatak.

It is now measured.

Query, Gauhati High Court	Documents
`"chatak" "katha"`	149
`"chatak" "katha" "Cachar"`	94
`"chatak" "katha" "Karimganj"`	27
`"chatak" "katha" "Cachar" "Karimganj"`	8, the overlap
`"chatak" "katha" "Hailakandi"`	38
`"lecha" "Cachar"`	24

Cachar and Karimganj between them account for 113 of the 149, 94 plus 27, less the 8 documents that name both.

That is at least 75%. The exact figure is 75.83…%, cut short rather than rounded up, because it is a floor and not a measurement: Hailakandi, the third district the Supreme Court named, adds another 38 documents, and their overlap with the first two was not separately queried. So the union of all three lies somewhere between 113 and 149.

At least three quarters of the chatak documents in this court name a Barak Valley district, and it may be all of them.

The exception is real, it sits in the districts the Supreme Court named, and it is small: against a lecha-and-lessa union of between 2,824 and 2,909, the chatak is about one document in twenty.

One thing the district queries do not show. A document that mentions Cachar is not necessarily a document about land in Cachar. A cause title, a party's address or a transferred file will do it. The concentration is strong enough that the reading survives; it is a concentration of mentions, not of parcels.

What this does not settle, and the distinction matters more than the count. It measures which word is used where. It does not show that a Barak Valley katha is the same size as a Brahmaputra Valley one, and there is a reason to expect it is not. An Assam katha is 2,880 square feet and holds twenty lessa of 144. A Bengal katha is 720 and holds sixteen chatak of 45. A deed from Silchar reciting chataks is more likely on the Bengal chain than the Assam one, and no instrument located says so either way.

So the open question narrows rather than closes: the word is a Barak Valley word, on the evidence; the size behind it is still not on the record. A reader with a Cachar or Karimganj document should establish the local katha before converting anything, and the Katha page is where the values and their grades are set out.

Assam's Own Acquisition Form Prints Both, With a Slash

The Assam Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Rules, 1964 carry the notice and the schedule the state serves when it takes land. Both leave the same blank:

"measuring an area of.................... bigha, katha ................lessas/chittacks in mauza/pargana. village.............in the district of............"

and, in the schedule:

"land as per schedule below measuring an area of bighas.................... kathas lessas/chittacks........................................in the village ................ Mauza................in .......................... Subdivision.................... of...................District shall be acquired"

The state's own form asks for the third rung in either unit, in one blank, separated by a slash. It does not equate them and it does not say which district gets which. It is a drafting acknowledgment that Assam runs two land ladders, made in 1964 and still on the books, the documentary counterpart of the counts above.

One detail worth noticing: the form writes chittacks, the Calcutta spelling, in a state whose High Court has never used it. The drafter reached for the Bengal form of a Bengal word; the courts of the state reach for the Assamese one.

Filling that form in: the arithmetic the reader actually has to do

The form asks for three numbers. Take a holding of 2 bigha 3 katha 12 lessa and work it down to one:

Step
Bighas to lessa	2 × 100	200
Kathas to lessa	3 × 20	60
Lessa		12
Total		272 lessa

Then out, in one multiplication each:

272 lessa is
Square feet	272 × 144	39,168
Square metres	39,168 × 0.09290304	3,638.82627072
Acres	39,168 ÷ 43,560	0.8991735537…
Bighas, as a decimal	272 ÷ 100	2.72

Reduce to lessa first, convert once. Every step above is a whole number until the acre, which is the only figure that recurs, and it recurs for the reason the Square Mile page sets out, not because anything was rounded. Converting each rung separately and adding is what produced the 402-versus-400 disagreement in the Assam building rule.

A Live Rule That States This Unit in Metres Five Times

The Assam Notified Urban Areas (Other than Guwahati) Building Rules, 2014, rule 66, Regulation for Residential use, is the most useful instrument located for this unit, because it does the one thing no other Indian rule does with a lessa: it converts it.

Rule 66(1), Table 8, Minimum Plot Size for Residential Use:

"High — 15 lessa, i.e, 200 sq. m; Medium — 01 katha, i.e., 268 sq.m; Low — 01 katha 10 lessa, i.e., 402 sq.m"

Rule 66(3), Table 10, Minimum Width of the Plot for Residential Use:

"Upto 15 Lessa i.e. 200 sq. m — 6; 15 Lessa to 1 Katha 10 Lessa, i.e., 400 sq. m — 10.0; 1 Katha 10 Lessa to 2 Katha 10 Lessa, i.e., 600 sq. m — 11.5; More than 2 Katha 10 Lessa, i.e., more than 600 sq. m — 12.0"

Five glosses. Recomputed at 144 square feet to the lessa and twenty lessa to the Assam katha, with the foot at 0.3048 metre exactly:

Rule text	Square feet	True m²	Rule says	Gap
15 lessa (Tables 8 and 10)	2,160	200.6705664	200	−0.334%
1 katha (Table 8)	2,880	267.5607552	268	+0.164%
1 katha 10 lessa (Table 8)	4,320	401.3411328	402	+0.164%
1 katha 10 lessa (Table 10)	4,320	401.3411328	400	−0.334%
2 katha 10 lessa (Table 10)	7,200	668.9018880	600	−10.301%

The same quantity, two answers, four sub-rules apart

One katha ten lessa is 402 square metres in Table 8 and 400 in Table 10. It is the same area in the same rule under the same heading, and the two tables impose different obligations on it. Table 8 decides whether a plot may be built on at all in a low-density zone, Table 10 decides whether it needs a ten-metre frontage.

Both figures are wrong by less than a fifth of a per cent, so nothing turns on the difference in practice. What turns on it is trust: a rule that converts the same quantity twice and gets two answers has not been read end to end by anyone who could check it.

The last row is not a rounding

Two katha ten lessa is fifty lessa, which is 7,200 square feet and 668.9 square metres. The rule says 600. That is 68.901888 square metres out, more than a tenth, and it is not a rounding of anything.

Look at the two columns of Table 10 side by side and the reason is visible:

Table 10, unit column	In lessa	Table 10, metric column	True
15 Lessa	15	200	200.67
1 Katha 10 Lessa	30	400	401.34
2 Katha 10 Lessa	50	600	668.90

The metric column is a clean ladder of 200, 400, 600. The unit column is 15, 30, 50, which is not. They agree at the first row, part company at the second and are ten per cent apart by the third. The metric side stopped tracking the unit side and kept counting on its own.

The row it happens in is the one that separates an 11.5-metre frontage requirement from a 12-metre one. A plot of exactly fifty lessa is over 600 square metres on the arithmetic and at the boundary on the rule's own gloss, and which side of the line it falls depends on which column the reader uses.

Where 402 comes from: a conjecture, marked as one

Table 8's own katha is 268 and ten lessa rounds to 134. 268 + 134 = 402. The drafter appears to have added his own rounded figures rather than converting the total, which is exactly how a +0.164% rounding at one rung becomes a +0.164% error at the next.

That is arithmetic on the rule's own numbers and nothing in the rule states it. It is offered as a possible explanation of one figure, not as a finding about the drafting.

And one thing that looks like a contradiction and is not

Table 8 gives the high-density minimum plot as 15 lessa; Table 9, immediately after it, gives it as 10. That is not the rule disagreeing with itself. Rule 66(2) opens "the Authority may allow relaxation of the provisions regarding plot size, with the following conditions on FAR and coverage, on appeal before appropriate authority", so Table 9 is the relaxed floor available on appeal, not a competing minimum. It is recorded here because a reader comparing the two tables without the opening words of the sub-rule would reach the wrong conclusion, and this page does not want to be the reason.

The Unit Crosses Into Meghalaya

The Garo Hills Autonomous District Cattle Taxation Regulation, 1966 carries a declaration a cattle owner files, with an Area column split into two:

"Name of Patta | Patta No. | Dag No. | Area | Remarks", and under Area, "Bigha | Lessa | Total"

Bigha and lessa, with no katha between them. A hundred lessa make an Assam bigha, so the pair is complete without the middle rung: a holding of one bigha thirty lessa is 1.30 bigha and the form's own Total column can carry it.

It is a Meghalaya instrument, a Sixth Schedule autonomous district council regulation, and it is on a cattle tax return rather than a land record, which is the kind of place a working unit turns up when the land statutes are silent. Of the three Indian statutory instruments located that use the word, this is the only one outside Assam.

Where the Lessa Is in Indian Law, and Where It Is Not

Four documents in the indexed statutory corpus contain the word, and all four result rows were read.

Instrument	Index rows	What it does with the lessa
Assam Notified Urban Areas (Other than Guwahati) Building Rules, 2014	2	fixes minimum plot sizes in it, and converts
Assam Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Rules, 1964	1	a blank in the acquisition notice and schedule
Garo Hills Autonomous District Cattle Taxation Regulation, 1966	1	a column in a tax declaration
Four documents, three instruments	4

Documents are not instruments (the database indexes a rule and its parent separately, which is why the 2014 Rules appear twice), so four documents are three instruments.

None of the three defines the lessa. The 2014 Rules come closest, and they do it by accident: a rule that says "15 lessa, i.e, 200 sq. m" implies a lessa of 13.33 square metres, or 143.52 square feet, which is 0.33% short of 144. That is a consequence of the gloss, not a definition, and the rule would not survive being read as one, its own next line, "01 katha, i.e., 268 sq.m", implies a lessa of 13.4 square metres, or 144.24 square feet, on the other side of the true figure.

What the size actually rests on is a finding made with the Assam katha: Assam Land Records Manual rule 117 prescribes a "mauzadari jar of 12 feet", and a lessa is that rod squared. A prescribed length, squared, is a stronger foundation than most units in this series have. The Bihar dhur has no instrument at all behind its figure, and the chatak has none behind its 45 square feet.

A Note on Searching for This Unit

Search lecha first, then lessa, and add them. The two are transliterations of one word and the corpus is split about three to one in favour of the form converters do not use. Add lesa if you want completeness; it returns two documents.

Do not search chittack or chittak in Assam. Both return zero in the Gauhati High Court. If you are looking for the Bengal unit inside Assam, the spelling is chatak.

Bind every count to a second word. Lecha unbound returns 2,670 in that court and 2,192 bound to katha; the difference is not all noise, but the bound figure is the one that can be defended.

Do not try to search both spellings at once. The obvious query, one form OR the other, is the one that fails, because the database treats bare words as an AND and reads OR as a word to look for. On a unit with two live spellings that is the difference between a real answer and a meaningless one, so every count here was run on its own. And before any of them, the filter was tested rather than trusted: a term that exists nowhere, run under doctypes:gauhati, comes back empty, and the same filter takes this word from 940 documents to 835. That test is on the page because a state filter in this series was once found to fail open and silently hand back the entire database.

And none of this counts land transactions. It counts documents in one court's English-language record, and the lessa's working life is in Assamese, in circle offices and mutation files that no database indexes. Read every figure here as a floor on the Gauhati High Court, not as a measurement of Assam. What the page argues from is the ratio between two spellings and the concentration of a third word in two districts, and both of those survive being floors.

Lessa to Square Feet, Katha and Bigha

Lessa	Square feet	Assam katha	Assam bigha
1	144	0.05	0.01
2	288	0.1	0.02
5	720	0.25	0.05
10	1,440	0.5	0.1
15	2,160	0.75	0.15
20	2,880	1	0.2
50	7,200	2.5	0.5
100	14,400	5	1
302.5	43,560	15.125	3.025

Every row terminates, and the last one is the reason the acre is awkward: it takes 302.5 lessa to make one, so an acre is fifteen and an eighth Assam kathas and three and a fortieth Assam bighas. The 15 and 50 rows are on the table because they are the two thresholds the 2014 building rules turn on.

Three Mistakes That Change the Answer

Using the Bengal katha in the Brahmaputra Valley. An Assam katha is 2,880 square feet and holds twenty lessa; a Bengal katha is 720 and holds sixteen chatak. Reading an Assam figure at the Bengal katha understates it by a factor of four. The tell is the third rung: lecha or lessa means the Assam chain, chatak means the Bengal one, and the Katha page sets out why five kathas make an Assam bigha where twenty make a Bengal one.

Taking the 2014 rules' metric figures as conversions. They are glosses, and not one of the five is exact; four are wrong even read as roundings, and one is out by a tenth. Only "01 katha, i.e., 268 sq.m" is the correctly rounded figure. If a plot's size matters, convert from the lessa figure and treat the square-metre gloss as the rule's shorthand rather than as its measurement.

Assuming an acre is a whole number of lessa. It is 302.5, and the half is real: 1 ⁄ 302.5 recurs as a decimal because 605 carries a factor of 11, and that eleven is traced to the rod the acre itself is built on. Round it to 302 or 303 and a ten-acre figure is out by five lessa either way.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many square feet is 1 lessa? 144, exactly, a twelve-foot square. It is 16 square yards and 13.37803776 square metres, both exact.

Is it spelt lessa or lecha? Both are transliterations of one Assamese word, and the record prefers lecha: in the Gauhati High Court, bound to katha, lecha returns 2,192 documents and lessa 717. Converters use lessa. If you are searching a document, search both and add them, then subtract the overlap, 85 documents in that court contain both spellings, which makes the union somewhere between 2,824 and 2,909.

How many lessa in 1 katha? Twenty, in Assam's Brahmaputra Valley. An Assam katha is 2,880 square feet. Do not carry that ratio into West Bengal. A Bengal katha is 720 square feet and its third rung is the chatak, sixteen to the katha.

How many lessa in 1 bigha? A hundred, because an Assam bigha is five kathas rather than twenty. That five-katha bigha is the single most common error in Assam land arithmetic and the Katha page sets out the evidence for it.

How many lessa in an acre? 302.5, not a whole number. An Assam bigha is 14,400 square feet and an acre is 43,560, so an acre is 3.025 bighas and 15.125 kathas. One lessa is 0.0033057851… of an acre, which recurs.

Is the lessa used in Assam land records? Yes, and in live subordinate legislation. Assam's 2014 building rules for notified urban areas fix minimum residential plot sizes in lessa and katha; the 1964 land requisition rules leave a blank for it in the acquisition notice; and a 1966 Garo Hills regulation in Meghalaya carries a Bigha | Lessa column on a cattle tax return.

Does any Indian law say how big a lessa is? No. Three instruments use the word and none defines it. The size rests on the Assam Land Records Manual's twelve-foot mauzadari jar, squared. The closest thing to a statutory figure is the 2014 rules' gloss "15 lessa, i.e, 200 sq. m", which implies 143.52 square feet, and the same rule's next line implies 144.24, so it cannot be read as a definition.

Why do the 2014 rules give two different metric figures for the same plot size? They do, and this page sets out both. One katha ten lessa is 402 square metres in Table 8 and 400 in Table 10. Neither is right, it is 401.34, but the difference between them is the more interesting fact.

Which parts of Assam use chatak instead of lessa? The Barak Valley. Of the 149 Gauhati High Court documents that pair chatak with katha, 113 name Cachar or Karimganj (94 plus 27, less the 8 that name both), and a further 38 name Hailakandi, the third district. The union of all three lies between 113 and 149, so at least 75% and possibly all of them name a Barak Valley district. That corroborates by measurement what the Supreme Court observed in 1996. It does not establish that a Barak Valley katha is the same size as a Brahmaputra Valley one, and no instrument located says.

What is a pawa? 36 square feet, the half-rod squared, four to the lessa. It belongs to the same Assam chain and the Katha page introduced it.

Can I convert a lessa figure without knowing the district? For the lessa itself, yes: 144 square feet everywhere it is used. For anything above it, no. The katha and the bigha are what change, and a Cachar document may not be on the Assam chain at all.

Sources and Method

Documents.

Assam Notified Urban Areas (Other than Guwahati) Building Rules, 2014, rule 66: Tables 8, 9 and 10, quoted in full above. The five metric glosses, the two that disagree, and rule 66(2)'s relaxation clause that explains why Table 9 is not a third contradiction.
Assam Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Rules, 1964: the notice and the schedule, both leaving the blank "lessas/chittacks".
The Garo Hills Autonomous District Cattle Taxation Regulation, 1966: the declaration form's Bigha | Lessa | Total columns.
Assam Land Records Manual, rule 117: the "mauzadari jar of 12 feet" the unit is the square of. Located and quoted on the Katha page; cited here and not restated.
Supreme Court, 1996, on the Barak Valley's use of chatak: also the Katha page's, and corroborated here by corpus measurement rather than repeated as authority.

Counting. This page's counts do one job (decide which of two transliterations a reader should search, and where inside Assam a different unit takes over), so they are all one-court counts, and the court is Gauhati. Each spelling went in on its own and paired with katha, which is what separates a land word from a surname; lecha survives that pairing 82% of the time, so the noise is small and the bound number is still the one quoted. The filter itself was tested before any of it: a nonsense term under doctypes:gauhati comes back empty, and the same filter cuts this word from 940 documents to 835. Every figure was run on 10 September 2026 and every query is printed beside its result. None of it measures Assam. It measures what the Gauhati High Court's English-language record contains, which under-represents the Assamese-language courts and the circle offices below them, so each number is a floor and the ratios between them are what the page actually argues from.

Arithmetic. This unit starts from a length rather than from an area: a rod of twelve feet, squared. That is why almost nothing on this page recurs. 144, 2,880 and 14,400 are all whole numbers of square feet, and the metric column terminates too because the foot is 0.3048 metre exactly. The one figure that will not settle is the acre, and it will not settle in either direction: 302.5 lessa to the acre, 0.0033057851… of an acre to the lessa. Where a figure ends in an ellipsis on this page it has been cut short, not rounded up into, so the last digit printed is a digit that is actually there. Everything is held as a ratio of whole numbers and turned into a decimal only when it is printed, the tables keep six places or as many as three significant digits need, and the conversion core below was re-derived by a second program that had no hand in writing it.

Computed here and stated in no source. Each is arithmetic on figures the instruments themselves print: all five gaps in the 2014 rules table, including the 10.301% on the last row; the 143.52 and 144.24 square feet the rule's two glosses imply for a single lessa; the 113 chatak documents that name Cachar or Karimganj and the 113-to-149 range for all three Barak districts; the three-to-one ratio between the two spellings; and the observation that Table 10's metric column is an arithmetic ladder while its unit column is not.

One conjecture, flagged where it appears. That Table 8's 402 is the rule's own 268 plus a rounded 134 rather than a conversion of the total. The numbers add exactly; nothing states it.

Searched for and not found, and asserted nowhere. Any Indian instrument defining the lessa. Three use it, none defines it · any instrument or judgment giving the size of a Barak Valley katha or chatak, which is what would close the question this page narrows · any official preference for the lessa spelling over lecha, the corpus saying the opposite · any explanation for Table 10's 600, which is neither the true figure nor the rule's own rounding of it · whether the 2014 Rules or the 1964 Rules have been amended since, both being read as indexed.

On the sibling pages. The Katha page owns the Assam chain, the five-katha bigha, the twelve-foot rod and the 1996 Supreme Court observation; the Chatak page owns the Bengal unit, its five spellings and the method for counting them; the Bigha page owns the bigha's regional values; the Dhur page owns the parallel case of a third rung with two names and no statutory size. All are cited here and none is restated.

Lessa Conversion Quick Reference

Conversion	1 Lessa	Note
Acre	0.003306	Recurring; Exact by definition: 43,560 sq ft = 4,840 sq yd
Ankanam	2 (Standard)	Region-specific; also 4 (Tirupati)
Ares	0.1337803776	Exact; 100 m², the metric are
Bigha	0.01 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)	Region-specific; also 0.005289 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) · 0.015868 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 0.021157 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills)
Biswa	0.105785 (UP / Rajasthan pucca)	Region-specific; also 0.165289 (Rajasthan kachha) · 0.317355 (Punjab / Haryana old records) · 0.330579 (Himachal Pradesh)
Biswa Kacha	0.317355 (Punjab / Haryana revenue definition)	Region-specific; also 0.165289 (Rajasthan kachha reading)
Cent	0.330579	Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly
Chatak	3.2	Exact; 5 sq yd exactly; 16 to the cottah, 968 to the acre. Reported, not stated by any instrument located
Decimal	0.330579	Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly
Dhur	40 (Tripura)	Region-specific; also 2.115702 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain))
Dismil	0.330579	Recurring; The decimal under another name
Gaj	16	Exact; The square yard, 9 sq ft
Gajam	16	Exact; The square yard in Telugu, 9 sq ft
Ground	0.06	Exact; Tamil Nadu Urban Land Tax Act 1966, s.2(8-A): "an area comprising two hundred and twenty three square metres (two thousand and four hundred square feet)"
Guntha	0.132231	Recurring; 121 sq yd; 40 guntha = 1 acre exactly
Hectare	0.001337803776	Exact; 10,000 m² exactly
Kanal	0.026446 (Standard (66-inch karam))	Region-specific; also 0.032 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.034843 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.039506 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
Katha	0.05 (Assam)	Region-specific; also 0.105785 (Bihar state standard) · 0.2 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 0.082645 (Bihar (Chhapra))
Killa	0.003306	Recurring; The acre under its Punjabi name
Marla	0.528926 (Standard (66-inch karam))	Region-specific; also 0.64 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.696862 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.790123 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
Murabba	0.000132 (Punjab canal colony)	Region-specific; also 0.000212 (Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal))
Nali	0.066667	Recurring; 240 sq yd; 16 mutthi of 135 sq ft. No instrument located states the figure
Perch	0.528926	Recurring; 30.25 sq yd; 160 perches = 1 acre
Pura	0.0025	Exact; 4 Assam bigha of 14,400 sq ft. The 4:1 ratio is SOURCED -- the Supreme Court states it in 1961 and 1971 and the Gauhati High Court in 1986, 2023, 2024 and 2026 -- but no instrument, judgment or manual states the square-foot figure, which is derived from the Assam bigha
Square Centimeter	133,780.3776	Exact; One ten-thousandth of a square metre
Square Feet	144	Exact; The base of this series
Square Inch	20,736	Exact; One 144th of a square foot
Square Karam	4.760331 (Standard (66-inch karam))	Region-specific; also 5.76 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 6.271758 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 7.111111 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
Square Kilometer	0.00001337803776	Exact; 1,000,000 m²
Square Meter	13.37803776	Exact; The SI unit of area
Square Mile	0.00000517	Recurring; Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976, Schedule (see s.79): "1 square mile = 2 589 988.110 336 square metres"; 640 acres exactly
Square Yard	16	Exact; 9 sq ft exactly

Lessa to Acre

1 lessa = 0.003306 acres, recurring. An acre is exact by definition: 43,560 sq ft = 4,840 sq yd.

The ratio is the fraction 2/605, 0.00330579…, which recurs.

Lessa to Acre Formula

Acre = Lessa ÷ 302.5

Popular Lessa to Acre Conversions

Lessa	Acre
1	0.003306
2	0.006612
3	0.009917
5	0.016529
10	0.033058
20	0.066116
50	0.165289
100	0.330579
200	0.661157
500	1.652893
1,000	3.305785

Worked Example

5 lessa ÷ 302.5 = 0.016529 acres

Reverse Conversion: Acre to Lessa

Lessa = Acre × 302.5

Lessa to Bigha

1 lessa = 0.01 bigha on the West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand definition. The bigha has no single national value. It is also 0.005289 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) · 0.015868 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 0.021157 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) and 5 more per lessa. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.

Where the bigha fits into the lessa's own record is set out in Lessa to Square Feet, Katha and Bigha above; what follows is the arithmetic.

Lessa to Bigha Formula

Bigha = Lessa × 0.01 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)

Popular Lessa to Bigha Conversions

Lessa	Bigha (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)
1	0.01
2	0.02
3	0.03
5	0.05
10	0.1
20	0.2
50	0.5
100	1
200	2
500	5
1,000	10

Bigha by Region

Bigha definition	Where it applies	1 bigha in sq ft	Bigha per lessa	Terminates?	Evidence
UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca	Purvanchal, Awadh, Patna belt, east Rajasthan	27,225	0.005289	Recurring	sourced
UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)	West Uttar Pradesh	9,075	0.015868	Recurring	sourced
UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills	West UP, Kumaon and Garhwal hills	6,806.25	0.021157	Recurring	sourced
Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai	Marwar, Gujarat, Terai	17,424	0.008264	Recurring	sourced
Madhya Pradesh	Madhya Pradesh	12,000	0.012	Exact	reported, not sourced
West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand (the definition used here)	West Bengal, Assam, Ranchi	14,400	0.01	Exact	sourced
Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt	Himachal Pradesh, Rohtak, Hisar	8,712	0.016529	Recurring	sourced
Punjab / west Haryana	Punjab, kanal belt of Haryana	21,780	0.006612	Recurring	sourced
Haryana Ambala belt	Ambala, Gurugram, Faridabad, Karnal, Panipat	8,100	0.017778	Recurring	sourced

Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 1 of the 9 are marked reported or no instrument located: in circulation and internally consistent, but this series could not find a rule, manual or judgment stating them. What was searched for each is recorded with that unit. Terminates? answers only whether the ratio has a finite decimal, not whether the figure behind it is verified.

To convert against one of the other definitions, multiply by its factor.

Worked Example

5 lessa × 0.01 = 0.05 bigha

Reverse Conversion: Bigha to Lessa

Lessa = Bigha × 100 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)

Lessa = Bigha × 189.0625 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) Lessa = Bigha × 3,025/48 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) Lessa = Bigha × 47.265625 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) Lessa = Bigha × 121 (Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai) Lessa = Bigha ÷ 0.012 (Madhya Pradesh) Lessa = Bigha × 60.5 (Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt) Lessa = Bigha × 151.25 (Punjab / west Haryana) Lessa = Bigha × 56.25 (Haryana Ambala belt)

Lessa to Chatak

1 lessa = 3.2 chatak, exact. A chatak is 5 sq yd exactly; 16 to the cottah, 968 to the acre. Reported, not stated by any instrument located.

The ratio is the fraction 16/5, or 3.2 exactly.

Lessa to Chatak Formula

Chatak = Lessa × 3.2

Popular Lessa to Chatak Conversions

Lessa	Chatak
1	3.2
2	6.4
3	9.6
5	16
10	32
20	64
50	160
100	320
200	640
500	1,600
1,000	3,200

Worked Example

5 lessa × 3.2 = 16 chatak

Reverse Conversion: Chatak to Lessa

Lessa = Chatak × 0.3125

Lessa to Dhur

1 lessa = 40 dhur on the Tripura definition. The dhur has no single national value. It is also 2.115702 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)) per lessa. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.

Lessa to Dhur Formula

Dhur = Lessa × 40 (Tripura)

Popular Lessa to Dhur Conversions

Lessa	Dhur (Tripura)
1	40
2	80
3	120
5	200
10	400
20	800
50	2,000
100	4,000
200	8,000
500	20,000
1,000	40,000

Dhur by Region

Dhur definition	Where it applies	1 dhur in sq ft	Dhur per lessa	Terminates?	Evidence
Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)	Patna belt, and Jharkhand districts counting in the Patna katha	68.0625	2.115702	Recurring	reported, not sourced
Tripura (the definition used here)	Tripura	3.6	40	Exact	sourced

Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 1 of the 2 are marked reported or no instrument located: in circulation and internally consistent, but this series could not find a rule, manual or judgment stating them. What was searched for each is recorded with that unit. Terminates? answers only whether the ratio has a finite decimal, not whether the figure behind it is verified.

Popular Lessa to Dhur, Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)

Lessa	Dhur (68.0625 sq ft)
1	2.115702
2	4.231405
3	6.347107
5	10.578512
10	21.157025
20	42.31405
50	105.785124
100	211.570248
200	423.140496
500	1,057.85124
1,000	2,115.702479

Worked Example

5 lessa × 40 = 200 dhur

Reverse Conversion: Dhur to Lessa

Lessa = Dhur × 0.025 (Tripura)

Lessa = Dhur × 0.47265625 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain))

Lessa to Hectare

1 lessa = 0.001337803776 hectares, exact. A hectare is 10,000 m² exactly.

The ratio is the fraction 1,306,449/976,562,500, or 0.001337803776 exactly.

Lessa to Hectare Formula

Hectare = Lessa × 0.001337803776

Popular Lessa to Hectare Conversions

Lessa	Hectare
1	0.001337803776
2	0.002675607552
3	0.004013411328
5	0.00668901888
10	0.01337803776
20	0.02675607552
50	0.0668901888
100	0.1337803776
200	0.2675607552
500	0.668901888
1,000	1.337803776

Worked Example

5 lessa × 0.001337803776 = 0.00668901888 hectares

Reverse Conversion: Hectare to Lessa

Lessa = Hectare ÷ 0.001337803776

Lessa to Katha

1 lessa = 0.05 katha on the Assam definition. The katha has no single national value. It is also 0.105785 (Bihar state standard) · 0.2 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 0.082645 (Bihar (Chhapra)) and 2 more per lessa. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.

Twenty lessa to the katha in Assam. Five katha then make an Assam bigha, not twenty, which is where most Assam conversions go wrong.

Where the katha fits into the lessa's own record is set out in Lessa to Square Feet, Katha and Bigha above; what follows is the arithmetic.

Lessa to Katha Formula

Katha = Lessa × 0.05 (Assam)

Popular Lessa to Katha Conversions

Lessa	Katha (Assam)
1	0.05
2	0.1
3	0.15
5	0.25
10	0.5
20	1
50	2.5
100	5
200	10
500	25
1,000	50

Katha by Region

Katha definition	Where it applies	1 katha in sq ft	Katha per lessa	Terminates?	Evidence
Bihar state standard	Patna, Arrah	1,361.25	0.105785	Recurring	sourced
West Bengal / Jharkhand	Rural West Bengal, Ranchi	720	0.2	Exact	sourced
Assam (the definition used here)	Assam (except Barak Valley)	2,880	0.05	Exact	sourced
Bihar (Chhapra)	Saran	1,742.4	0.082645	Recurring	sourced
Bihar (Hajipur)	Vaishali	1,901.25	0.07574	Recurring	sourced
Bihar (Bettiah)	West Champaran	3,267	0.044077	Recurring	sourced

To convert against one of the other definitions, multiply by its factor.

Worked Example

5 lessa × 0.05 = 0.25 katha

Reverse Conversion: Katha to Lessa

Lessa = Katha × 20 (Assam)

Lessa = Katha × 9.453125 (Bihar state standard) Lessa = Katha × 5 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) Lessa = Katha × 12.1 (Bihar (Chhapra)) Lessa = Katha × 13.203125 (Bihar (Hajipur)) Lessa = Katha × 22.6875 (Bihar (Bettiah))

Lessa to Pura

1 lessa = 0.0025 pura, exact. A pura is 4 Assam bigha of 14,400 sq ft. The 4:1 ratio is SOURCED -- the Supreme Court states it in 1961 and 1971 and the Gauhati High Court in 1986, 2023, 2024 and 2026 -- but no instrument, judgment or manual states the square-foot figure, which is derived from the Assam bigha.

Four hundred lessa to the pura, twenty lessa to the katha, five katha to the bigha, four bigha to the pura. The whole Assam chain is whole numbers from the lessa up, which is why an Assam deed rarely carries a fraction.

Lessa to Pura Formula

Pura = Lessa × 0.0025

Popular Lessa to Pura Conversions

Lessa	Pura
1	0.0025
2	0.005
3	0.0075
5	0.0125
10	0.025
20	0.05
50	0.125
100	0.25
200	0.5
500	1.25
1,000	2.5

Worked Example

5 lessa × 0.0025 = 0.0125 pura

Reverse Conversion: Pura to Lessa

Lessa = Pura × 400

Lessa to Square Feet

1 lessa = 144 square feet, exact. A square foot is the base of this series.

144 square feet to the lessa, twelve feet square. Four pawa make a lessa in Assam usage, and twenty lessa a katha.

Where the square foot fits into the lessa's own record is set out in Lessa to Square Feet, Katha and Bigha above; what follows is the arithmetic.

Lessa to Square Feet Formula

Square Feet = Lessa × 144

Popular Lessa to Square Feet Conversions

Lessa	Square Feet
1	144
2	288
3	432
5	720
10	1,440
20	2,880
50	7,200
100	14,400
200	28,800
500	72,000
1,000	144,000

Worked Example

5 lessa × 144 = 720 square feet

Reverse Conversion: Square Feet to Lessa

Lessa = Square Feet ÷ 144

Lessa to Square Meter

1 lessa = 13.37803776 square metres, exact. A square metre is the SI unit of area.

The ratio is the fraction 5,225,796/390,625, or 13.37803776 exactly.

Lessa to Square Meter Formula

Square Meter = Lessa × 13.37803776

Popular Lessa to Square Meter Conversions

Lessa	Square Meter
1	13.37803776
2	26.75607552
3	40.13411328
5	66.8901888
10	133.7803776
20	267.5607552
50	668.901888
100	1,337.803776
200	2,675.607552
500	6,689.01888
1,000	13,378.03776

Worked Example

5 lessa × 13.37803776 = 66.8901888 square metres

Reverse Conversion: Square Meter to Lessa

Lessa = Square Meter ÷ 13.37803776

Lessa to the Remaining Units

Exactness of the method is not exactness of the result: where a ratio does not terminate, the table says so and the formula gives the fraction.

Lessa to Ankanam

1 lessa = 2 ankanam on the Standard definition; 4 on the Tirupati definition. Ankanam = Lessa × 2 (Standard) · reverse Lessa = Ankanam × 0.5

Lessa	Ankanam (Standard)
1	2
2	4
3	6
5	10
10	20
20	40
50	100
100	200
200	400
500	1,000
1,000	2,000