Nothing is wrong with the square foot. What can be wrong is the number you were handed.
Written and fact-checked by Aadil Saif. Arithmetic independently re-verified · Last updated September 2026
Part of the India Land Unit Converter series.
Every figure was computed in exact fraction arithmetic from two defined values (1 foot = 0.3048 metre exactly, and 1 acre = 43,560 square feet exactly) then machine-checked cell by cell. Nothing was copied from another converter. Every legal claim is cited to the Act, Rule, gazette notification or Indian Standard it comes from, and quoted where the wording matters. Where a fact could not be verified, this page says so instead of supplying a plausible one.
A note on spelling. Section headings use the spellings Indians search with, Square Feet, Square Meter, Square Centimeter. Body text uses metre, centimetre, kilometre.
Every other page in this series opens by telling you what is wrong with the unit. The bigha has nine regional values. The ankanam has no primary source. The are is routinely confused with the guntha.
None of that applies here. A square foot is a square foot in Chennai, in Chandigarh and in Cape Town. It is defined exactly, it has not changed since 1959, and no state has its own version.
So this page inverts the usual order. You get the conversion first. The warning comes second: and it is a full section, because the thing that goes wrong with square feet in Indian property is not the unit. It is the number.
Three specific failures cost Indian buyers real money, and this page addresses each one:
Start here: One square foot in every unit.
Convert now One square foot in every unit · Square Feet to Gaj · Square Feet to Square Meter · Square Feet to Acre · Square Feet to Cent, Decimal and Dismil
Regional units Bigha, Katha, Biswa and Dhur · Guntha, Ground, Ankanam and Chatak · Marla, Kanal and Square Karam
Arithmetic only Hectare, Are, Square Kilometer, Square Mile · Square Inch and Square Centimeter · Nali, Lessa, Pura, Killa, Murabba
The part that matters more than the arithmetic Which square feet are you buying? · Standard plot sizes · Price per square foot · Is the square foot legal for Indian land records? · The foot itself · Three mistakes
Reference Frequently asked questions · 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 · Lessa · Marla · Murabba · Nali · Perch · Pura · Square Centimeter · 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.
Every factor is a square foot's own size, 1 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Square Feet to Acre | Square Feet ÷ 43,560 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Ankanam | Square Feet ÷ 72 | Recurring · Ankanam is regional. This row is the Standard; also 0.027778 |
| Square Feet to Ares | Square Feet × 0.0009290304 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Bigha | Square Feet ÷ 27,225 | Recurring · Bigha is regional. This row is the UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca; also 0.000110, 0.000147, 0.0000574 and 5 more |
| Square Feet to Biswa | Square Feet ÷ 1,361.25 | Recurring · Biswa is regional. This row is the UP / Rajasthan pucca; also 0.001148, 0.002204, 0.002296 |
| Square Feet to Biswa Kacha | Square Feet ÷ 453.75 | Recurring · Biswa Kacha is regional. This row is the Punjab / Haryana revenue; also 0.001148 |
| Square Feet to Cent | Square Feet ÷ 435.6 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Chatak | Square Feet ÷ 45 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Decimal | Square Feet ÷ 435.6 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Dhur | Square Feet ÷ 68.0625 | Recurring · Dhur is regional. This row is the Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain); also 0.277778 |
| Square Feet to Dismil | Square Feet ÷ 435.6 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Gaj | Square Feet ÷ 9 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Gajam | Square Feet ÷ 9 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Ground | Square Feet ÷ 2,400 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Guntha | Square Feet ÷ 1,089 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Hectare | Square Feet × 0.000009290304 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Kanal | Square Feet ÷ 5,445 | Recurring · Kanal is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 0.000222, 0.000242, 0.000274 |
| Square Feet to Katha | Square Feet ÷ 1,361.25 | Recurring · Katha is regional. This row is the Bihar state standard; also 0.001389, 0.000347, 0.000574 and 2 more |
| Square Feet to Killa | Square Feet ÷ 43,560 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Lessa | Square Feet ÷ 144 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Marla | Square Feet ÷ 272.25 | Recurring · Marla is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 0.004444, 0.004839, 0.005487 and 1 more |
| Square Feet to Murabba | Square Feet ÷ 1,089,000 | Recurring · Murabba is regional. This row is the Punjab canal colony; also 0.00000147 |
| Square Feet to Nali | Square Feet ÷ 2,160 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Perch | Square Feet ÷ 272.25 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Pura | Square Feet ÷ 57,600 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Square Centimeter | Square Feet × 929.0304 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Square Inch | Square Feet × 144 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Square Karam | Square Feet ÷ 30.25 | Recurring · Square Karam is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 0.04, 0.043554, 0.049383 |
| Square Feet to Square Kilometer | Square Feet × 0.00000009290304 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Square Meter | Square Feet × 0.09290304 | Exact |
| Square Feet to Square Mile | Square Feet ÷ 27,878,400 | Recurring |
| Square Feet to Square Yard | Square Feet ÷ 9 | Recurring |
One square foot in thirty-one of the thirty-three units in this series; biswa kacha and pura are in the Quick Reference and in their own sections below. Units marked region-dependent have no single national value and are handled in their own section below.
| Unit | 1 square foot equals | Exact? |
|---|---|---|
| Square inch | 144 | Exact |
| Square centimetre | 929.0304 | Exact |
| Square yard / Gaj / Gajam | 0.111111 | Recurring |
| Square metre | 0.09290304 | Exact |
| Chatak (West Bengal) | 0.022222 | Recurring |
| Ankanam (coastal Andhra) | 0.013889 | Recurring |
| Lessa (Assam) | 0.006944 | Recurring |
| Square karam / Sarsahi (66-in) | 0.033058 | Recurring |
| Marla / Perch (66-in) | 0.00367309 | Recurring |
| Cent = Decimal = Dismil | 0.00229568 | Recurring |
| Are | 0.0009290304 | Exact |
| Guntha | 0.00091827 | Recurring |
| Ground (Tamil Nadu) | 0.00041667 | Recurring |
| Nali (Uttarakhand) | 0.00046296 | Recurring |
| Kanal (66-in) | 0.00018365 | Recurring |
| Acre / Killa | 0.0000229568 | Recurring |
| Hectare | 0.000009290304 | Exact |
| Murabba | 0.000000918274 | Recurring |
| Square kilometre | 0.00000009290304 | Exact |
| Square mile | 0.00000003587 | Recurring |
| Bigha · Katha · Biswa · Dhur | Region-dependent, no single value | n/a |
Region-dependent (bigha, katha, biswa, dhur) are in the regional matrix.
This is the direction most people actually need. How many square feet are in one of each unit:
| Unit | Square feet in one | Exact? |
|---|---|---|
| Square inch | 0.006944 | Recurring |
| Square centimetre | 0.001076 | Recurring |
| Square yard / Gaj / Gajam | 9 | Exact |
| Square metre | 10.76391 | Recurring |
| Chatak (West Bengal) | 45 | Exact |
| Ankanam (coastal Andhra) | 72 | Exact |
| Lessa (Assam) | 144 | Exact |
| Square karam / Sarsahi (66-in) | 30.25 | Exact |
| Marla / Perch (66-in) | 272.25 | Exact |
| Cent = Decimal = Dismil | 435.6 | Exact |
| Are | 1,076.391042 | Recurring |
| Guntha | 1,089 | Exact |
| Ground (Tamil Nadu) | 2,400 | Exact |
| Nali (Uttarakhand) | 2,160 | Exact |
| Kanal (66-in) | 5,445 | Exact |
| Acre / Killa | 43,560 | Exact |
| Hectare | 107,639.104167 | Recurring |
| Murabba | 1,089,000 | Exact |
| Square kilometre | 10,763,910.41671 | Recurring |
| Square mile | 27,878,400 | Exact |
| Bigha · Katha · Biswa · Dhur | 6,806.25 to 65,340, see matrix | n/a |
The Exact column is not decoration. A conversion marked Exact can be written down completely and will never round; one marked Recurring has been truncated, and a long enough chain of recurring conversions will drift. Only six of the twenty-one conversions above are exact, and every one of them is either a metric relationship or a whole-number multiple of the square foot, the square inch at 144, and the five metric units, which are exact because the international foot is defined as 0.3048 metres.
1 square yard = 9 square feet, exactly. Not approximately: a yard is three feet by definition, so a square yard is three feet by three feet, and nothing rounds anywhere in the conversion.
In Indian property, gaj and square yard mean the same thing. Strictly, gaj was a unit of length, not area, and a good deal of confusion in older documents comes from that. In every modern transaction (a listing, a broker's quote, a Haryana or Delhi plot) "200 gaj" means 200 square yards. The historical gaz, including the 33-inch ilahi gaz and its role in the bigha, is covered on the Bigha page and in the Indian Land Units by State hub. It has no bearing on the arithmetic here.
The formulas:
Square feet ÷ 9 = gaj
Gaj × 9 = square feet
Square feet to gaj:
| Square feet | Gaj (square yards) |
|---|---|
| 100 | 11.1111 |
| 200 | 22.2222 |
| 300 | 33.3333 |
| 450 | 50 |
| 500 | 55.5556 |
| 600 | 66.6667 |
| 750 | 83.3333 |
| 900 | 100 |
| 1,000 | 111.1111 |
| 1,200 | 133.3333 |
| 1,500 | 166.6667 |
| 1,800 | 200 |
| 2,000 | 222.2222 |
| 2,400 | 266.6667 |
| 3,000 | 333.3333 |
| 5,000 | 555.5556 |
| 10,000 | 1,111.1111 |
Gaj to square feet:
| Gaj (square yards) | Square feet |
|---|---|
| 50 | 450 |
| 100 | 900 |
| 150 | 1,350 |
| 200 | 1,800 |
| 250 | 2,250 |
| 300 | 2,700 |
| 500 | 4,500 |
| 1,000 | 9,000 |
Because the factor is exactly 9, a square-foot figure gives a whole number of gaj only when it is divisible by 9. This is why north Indian plots are quoted in round gaj (50, 100, 200, 500), and their square-foot equivalents come out as 450, 900, 1,800 and 4,500 rather than as round hundreds. It also means the reverse is rarely clean: 1,200 sq ft is 133.33 gaj, not a round figure, which is exactly why a 1,200 sq ft flat is never advertised in gaj.
Worked example. A plot in Rohini is advertised at 200 gaj. The seller later sends the measured area as 1,805 sq ft and says it is "about 200 gaj". Divide: 1,805 ÷ 9 = 200.56 gaj. The plot is 0.56 gaj, about 5 square feet, larger than the round figure. That is within any reasonable measurement tolerance, and the seller's description is fair. Had the measured figure come back as 1,750 sq ft, that would be 194.44 gaj, a shortfall of 5.5 gaj or nearly 3%, and worth raising before the agreement is drawn.
Worked example. A buyer is comparing a 250 gaj plot in Gurugram at ₹1.4 crore against a 2,400 sq ft plot in Faridabad at ₹1.15 crore. Put both in the same unit: 250 gaj = 2,250 sq ft; the Faridabad plot is 2,400 ÷ 9 = 266.67 gaj. Per square foot the Gurugram plot is ₹6,222 and the Faridabad plot ₹4,792. The Faridabad plot is both larger and cheaper per unit, which the headline prices, quoted in different units, concealed.
This is the conversion every registered agreement in India eventually requires, and it is the one place where the exactness of the square foot produces a genuinely awkward result.
Going from square feet to square metres is exact. Since 1 foot = 0.3048 metre by definition, 1 square foot = 0.3048² = 0.09290304 square metres, exactly. Eight decimal places, and it terminates.
Going the other way is not. 1 square metre = 1 ÷ 0.09290304 = 10.763910416709722… square feet, and the decimal never terminates. Every square-foot figure you have ever seen derived from a metric area has been rounded.
That asymmetry is the reason a brochure and an agreement can quote the same flat and disagree.
The formulas:
Square feet × 0.09290304 = square metres
Square metres × 10.7639104167 = square feet
| Square feet | Square metres |
|---|---|
| 100 | 9.2903 |
| 200 | 18.5806 |
| 300 | 27.8709 |
| 450 | 41.8064 |
| 500 | 46.4515 |
| 600 | 55.7418 |
| 750 | 69.6773 |
| 900 | 83.6127 |
| 1,000 | 92.903 |
| 1,200 | 111.4836 |
| 1,500 | 139.3546 |
| 1,800 | 167.2255 |
| 2,000 | 185.8061 |
| 2,400 | 222.9673 |
| 3,000 | 278.7091 |
| 5,000 | 464.5152 |
| 10,000 | 929.0304 |
Square metres to square feet:
| Square metres | Square feet |
|---|---|
| 10 | 107.6391 |
| 25 | 269.0978 |
| 50 | 538.1955 |
| 75 | 807.2933 |
| 100 | 1,076.391 |
| 150 | 1,614.5866 |
| 200 | 2,152.7821 |
| 250 | 2,690.9776 |
| 500 | 5,381.9552 |
| 1,000 | 10,763.9104 |
A developer markets a flat as 1,200 sq ft. The registered agreement, which must state carpet area, gives it as 111.48 sq m.
Convert back: 111.48 × 10.7639104167 = 1,199.96 sq ft. The two figures agree to within 0.04 sq ft. No problem.
Now suppose the agreement rounds to the nearest whole square metre and states 111 sq m. Convert back: 111 × 10.7639104167 = 1,194.79 sq ft. The gap is now 5.21 sq ft, small in itself, but at ₹12,000 per square foot that is ₹62,520, and it is the agreement's figure that binds.
Round the other way to 112 sq m and the flat becomes 1,205.56 sq ft, 5.56 sq ft more than advertised.
The rule to carry away: a whole square metre is 10.76 square feet. Any agreement that states carpet area to the nearest square metre carries up to about ±5.4 sq ft of rounding either side. Ask for the figure to two decimal places in square metres, which pins it to about ±0.05 sq ft. Where brochure and agreement disagree, the agreement is the document that binds you, not the brochure.
| Square Feet | Square Meter |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.09290304 |
| 2 | 0.18580608 |
| 3 | 0.27870912 |
| 5 | 0.4645152 |
| 10 | 0.9290304 |
| 20 | 1.8580608 |
| 50 | 4.645152 |
| 100 | 9.290304 |
| 200 | 18.580608 |
| 500 | 46.45152 |
| 1,000 | 92.90304 |
Square Meter = Square Feet × 0.09290304 · reverse Square Feet = Square Meter ÷ 0.09290304
1 acre = 43,560 square feet, exactly. This is the anchor value for the whole of this series.
This conversion is the one most often done in the wrong direction, because 43,560 is a large and unfamiliar number and it is not obvious at a glance which way it goes. The check is simple: an acre is much bigger than a square foot, so the acre figure must always be much smaller. If your answer got larger, you multiplied when you should have divided.
The formulas:
Square feet ÷ 43,560 = acres
Acres × 43,560 = square feet
Acres to square feet:
| Acres | Square feet |
|---|---|
| 0.25 | 10,890 |
| 0.5 | 21,780 |
| 1 | 43,560 |
| 2 | 87,120 |
| 5 | 217,800 |
| 10 | 435,600 |
| 20 | 871,200 |
| 50 | 2,178,000 |
| 100 | 4,356,000 |
| Square feet | Acres | Why it is worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| 10,890 | ¼ | The smallest fraction of an acre that is commonly transacted |
| 21,780 | ½ | Also exactly one Punjab bigha, and four kanal |
| 43,560 | 1 | The anchor. Also one killa |
Worked example. A farm is listed at 2.75 acres. In square feet that is 2.75 × 43,560 = 119,790 sq ft. In gunthas, the unit a Maharashtra or Karnataka record will use, that is 119,790 ÷ 1,089 = 110 gunthas, which is exactly 2.75 × 40, as it must be. The chain closes, which is a good sign that no step went astray.
The acre's own definitional questions (the international versus US survey acre, the 4 parts-per-million difference, the four-check method for a suspicious figure) belong with the acre itself and are not repeated here.
| Square Feet | Acre |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0000230 |
| 2 | 0.0000459 |
| 3 | 0.0000689 |
| 5 | 0.000115 |
| 10 | 0.000230 |
| 20 | 0.000459 |
| 50 | 0.001148 |
| 100 | 0.002296 |
| 200 | 0.004591 |
| 500 | 0.011478 |
| 1,000 | 0.022957 |
Acre = Square Feet ÷ 43,560 · reverse Square Feet = Acre × 43,560
Cent, decimal and dismil are the same unit under three names: 435.6 square feet, exactly one-hundredth of an acre.
They differ by region, not by size:
| Name | Where it is used |
|---|---|
| Cent | Tamil Nadu, Kerala, parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh |
| Decimal | Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand; the spelling used in revenue records |
| Dismil | The same unit in Hindi-belt speech; also written desimal or dismal |
| Shatak | Bengali usage, same value |
Any converter that gives different values for cent and decimal is wrong. They are one hundredth of an acre in all four usages. An evaluation of Bihar's land records published on a Government of India domain states it plainly: "One decimal of land is equal to 435.6 square feet or 0.01 acres."
The formulas:
Square feet ÷ 435.6 = cent
Cent × 435.6 = square feet
| Square feet | Cent / Decimal / Dismil |
|---|---|
| 100 | 0.229568 |
| 435.6 | 1 |
| 500 | 1.147842 |
| 1,000 | 2.295684 |
| 2,000 | 4.591368 |
| 4,356 | 10 |
| 5,000 | 11.478421 |
| 10,000 | 22.956841 |
| 43,560 | 100 |
Cent, decimal or dismil to other units:
| Cent / Decimal / Dismil | Square feet | Square metres | Gaj |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 435.6 | 40.4686 | 48.4 |
| 2 | 871.2 | 80.9371 | 96.8 |
| 3 | 1,306.8 | 121.4057 | 145.2 |
| 5 | 2,178 | 202.3428 | 242 |
| 10 | 4,356 | 404.6856 | 484 |
| 20 | 8,712 | 809.3713 | 968 |
| 25 | 10,890 | 1,011.7141 | 1,210 |
| 50 | 21,780 | 2,023.4282 | 2,420 |
| 100 | 43,560 | 4,046.8564 | 4,840 |
The mental anchor: one cent is a little over 435 square feet, so 1,000 sq ft is roughly 2.3 cents and 10,000 sq ft is roughly 23 cents. A quarter-acre plot is 25 cents.
Note that the Tamil Nadu Survey and Settlement Department's own published conversion table gives 1 cent = 435 square feet. That is the exact figure, 435.6, rounded down. On a 25-cent plot the rounding loses 15 square feet. Use 435.6.
These four units have no national value. A bigha in Bettiah is 65,340 square feet; a bigha in the Uttarakhand hills is 6,806.25. That is a 9.6-fold difference behind one word, in one country, today. The same applies in smaller measure to katha, biswa and dhur.
So there is no single number for any of the four. Find your row.
| Unit | Where | Square feet in 1 | Units in 1,000 sq ft | Units in 10,000 sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bigha | UP pucca · Bihar (Patna) · Rajasthan pucca | 27,225 | 0.0367 | 0.3673 |
| Bigha | Punjab · western Haryana | 21,780 | 0.0459 | 0.4591 |
| Bigha | Rajasthan kachha · Gujarat · Uttarakhand plains | 17,424 | 0.0574 | 0.5739 |
| Bigha | West Bengal · Assam · Jharkhand | 14,400 | 0.0694 | 0.6944 |
| Bigha | Madhya Pradesh (weak source) | 12,000 | 0.0833 | 0.8333 |
| Bigha | UP kachha (6⅔ biswa) | 9,075 | 0.1102 | 1.1019 |
| Bigha | Himachal Pradesh · Haryana (Rohtak belt) | 8,712 | 0.1148 | 1.1478 |
| Bigha | Haryana (Ambala belt) | 8,100 | 0.1235 | 1.2346 |
| Bigha | UP kachha (5 biswa) · Uttarakhand hills | 6,806.25 | 0.1469 | 1.4692 |
| Katha | Bihar (Patna) | 1,361.25 | 0.7346 | 7.3462 |
| Katha | West Bengal · Jharkhand | 720 | 1.3889 | 13.8889 |
| Katha | Assam | 2,880 | 0.3472 | 3.4722 |
| Biswa | Uttar Pradesh · Rajasthan pucca | 1,361.25 | 0.7346 | 7.3462 |
| Biswa | Rajasthan kachha | 871.2 | 1.1478 | 11.4784 |
| Biswa | Punjab · Haryana (old / kachha) | 453.75 | 2.2039 | 22.0386 |
| Biswa | Himachal Pradesh | 435.6 | 2.2957 | 22.9568 |
| Dhur | Bihar · Jharkhand | 68.06 | 14.6924 | 146.9238 |
| Dhur | Tripura | 3.6 | 277.7778 | 2,777.7778 |
Worked example: why a single number would be useless. A plot measures 10,000 square feet. Depending on where it is, that is:
Four answers, all correct, differing by a factor of four. Any page that tells you "10,000 sq ft = X bigha" without asking where the land is has guessed.
The regional derivations (why the kachha bigha is exactly one third of the pucca bigha, where the 33-inch ilahi gaz came from, which Bihar districts run their own values, and which states do not use the bigha at all) are set out with the bigha itself. They are not repeated here.
These are regional units that, unlike the bigha, do have single verified values. Each is used in one identifiable part of India, and each converts cleanly.
| Unit | Where used | Square feet in 1 | 1,000 sq ft equals | 2,400 sq ft equals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guntha | Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana | 1,089 | 0.9183 | 2.2039 |
| Ground | Tamil Nadu (Chennai) | 2,400 | 0.4167 | 1 |
| Ankanam | Coastal Andhra Pradesh | 72 | 13.8889 | 33.3333 |
| Ankanam (Tirupati belt) | Chittoor / Tirupati | 36 | 27.7778 | 66.6667 |
| Chatak | West Bengal | 45 | 22.2222 | 53.3333 |
| Lessa | Assam | 144 | 6.9444 | 16.6667 |
A line on each:
Worked example. A Bangalore site advertised as "30 × 40" is nominally 1,200 sq ft, which is 1,200 ÷ 1,089 = 1.1019 gunthas. A Chennai plot of 1.5 grounds is 3,600 sq ft, or 3.31 gunthas. If either figure came from a land record rather than a listing, read the plot sizes section before trusting the square-foot number. Bangalore sites in particular are not the size their names suggest.
In Punjab, Haryana and parts of Himachal Pradesh the marla, kanal and square karam are all derived from the length of the karam, the surveyor's rod, and the karam is not the same length everywhere. Four belts are documented, and the marla ranges from 182.25 to 272.25 square feet across them, a spread of 49%.
Establish the belt before converting. A conversion done on the standard 66-inch karam in a district that uses the 54-inch Kapurthala karam is wrong by a third.
| Karam length | Where | Square karam (sq ft) | Marla (sq ft) | Kanal (sq ft) | Marlas in 1,000 sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 66 inches (standard) | Most of Punjab and Haryana | 30.25 | 272.25 | 5,445 | 3.6731 |
| 60 inches (Majha) | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 25 | 225 | 4,500 | 4.4444 |
| 57.5 inches (Doaba) | Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kangra | 22.9601 | 206.6406 | 4,132.8125 | 4.8393 |
| 54 inches (Kapurthala) | Kapurthala | 20.25 | 182.25 | 3,645 | 5.487 |
At the standard 66-inch karam, 1 marla = 1 perch = 272.25 sq ft exactly, and there are exactly 160 marla and 8 kanal to the acre. That whole-number closure is a useful check: if your marla count per acre is not 160, you are not on the standard karam.
The karam's derivation and the history of the four belts are covered in the Indian Land Units by State hub.
A separate trap, and a large one. The "marla" and "kanal" in the names of HSVP (formerly HUDA) urban-estate plots in Haryana are not the revenue marla and kanal. An HSVP "10 marla" plot is 250 square yards; ten revenue marlas is 302.5 square yards. That is a 17% difference, and it is documented in HSVP's own notification. See Standard Plot Sizes.
Arithmetic only. These four are looked up, not read.
Square feet × 0.00000929 = hectares
Square feet × 0.000929 = ares
Hectares × 107,639.104167 = square feet
| Unit | Square feet in 1 | 1,000 sq ft | 10,000 sq ft | 100,000 sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Are | 1,076.391042 | 0.92903 | 9.290304 | 92.90304 |
| Hectare | 107,639.104167 | 0.0092903 | 0.09290304 | 0.9290304 |
| Square kilometre | 10,763,910.41671 | 0.000092903 | 0.0009290304 | 0.009290304 |
| Square mile | 27,878,400 | 0.0000358701 | 0.0003587006 | 0.0035870064 |
When you need each: hectare, agricultural land records in most states, and 7/12 extracts in Maharashtra. Are: the second and third columns of a Maharashtra 7/12 extract, and named in the Legal Metrology (National Standards) Rules 2011 as India's first unit of land measurement. Square kilometre and square mile, geography and administrative areas, not property.
Arithmetic only.
Square feet × 144 = square inches
Square feet × 929.0304 = square centimetres
Both factors are exact.
| Square feet | Square inches | Square centimetres |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 144 | 929.0304 |
| 5 | 720 | 4,645.152 |
| 10 | 1,440 | 9,290.304 |
| 25 | 3,600 | 23,225.76 |
| 50 | 7,200 | 46,451.52 |
| 100 | 14,400 | 92,903.04 |
| 500 | 72,000 | 464,515.2 |
| 1,000 | 144,000 | 929,030.4 |
These are finishing units, not land units. You will need them for tiling, flooring, cladding and joinery quantities, never for a plot or a khata.
Arithmetic only. Each has its own page in this series.
| Unit | Where | Square feet in 1 | 10,000 sq ft equals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nali | Uttarakhand (Kumaon, Garhwal) | 2,160 | 4.6296 |
| Pura | Assam | 57,600 | 0.173611 |
| Killa | Punjab, Haryana | 43,560 | 0.229568 |
| Murabba | Punjab, Haryana | 1,089,000 | 0.00918274 |
| Kuncham | Andhra Pradesh | 4,356 | 2.2957 |
| Cawnie | Tamil Nadu (historical) | 57,600 | 0.173611 |
Killa is another name for the acre, and murabba is 25 killa, 1,089,000 square feet. Both are Punjab and Haryana settlement units. Whether a murabba is square or rectangular changes what one killa within it measures; that question is handled on the Acre page.
This is the section that matters more than any conversion on this page.
A flat has at least five different areas, all of them correctly described as "square feet", and they can differ from one another by 40% or more. Only one of the five is defined in Indian law.
| Quantity | What it is | Defined in law? |
|---|---|---|
| Plot area | The land parcel, measured to its outer boundaries | Not defined in RERA; "plot/site" is defined in building bye-laws as "a parcel or piece of land enclosed by definite boundaries" |
| Plinth area | The built-up covered area measured at floor level, walls included | IS 3861:2002, an Indian Standard, not a statute |
| Carpet area | The net usable floor area inside the flat | Yes, RERA 2016, section 2(k). The only one |
| Built-up area | Carpet area plus the walls and usually the balcony | No statutory definition anywhere |
| Super built-up area | Built-up area plus a share of lifts, lobbies, staircases, clubhouse and other common areas | No statutory definition anywhere |
Section 2(k) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 reads:
(k) "carpet area" means the net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding the area covered by the external walls, areas under services shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area and exclusive open terrace area, but includes the area covered by the internal partition walls of the apartment.
Explanation.: For the purpose of this clause, the expression "exclusive balcony or verandah area" means the area of the balcony or verandah, as the case may be, which is appurtenant to the net usable floor area of an apartment, meant for the exclusive use of the allottee; and "exclusive open terrace area" means the area of open terrace which is appurtenant to the net usable floor area of an apartment, meant for the exclusive use of the allottee;
Read carefully, the definition does four things:
| Treatment under s.2(k) | |
|---|---|
| Internal partition walls | Included; the area they occupy counts as yours |
| External walls | Excluded |
| Areas under services shafts | Excluded |
| Exclusive balcony or verandah | Excluded |
| Exclusive open terrace | Excluded |
Kitchens, bathrooms, stores and passages inside the flat are not excluded, so they are part of the RERA carpet area. This matters, and the next subsection explains why.
India has a second, older definition of "carpet area", in IS 3861:2002, Method of Measurement of Plinth, Carpet and Rentable Areas of Buildings (Second Revision), issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards under committee CED 44. Architects, quantity surveyors and municipal valuers use it. Clause 2.2 defines carpet area as "the floor area of the usable rooms at any floor level", arrived at by deducting wall area from plinth area.
Clause 5.2 of IS 3861 then excludes, from carpet area: verandah; corridor and passage; entrance hall and porch; staircase and stair-cover; lift shaft and machine room; bathroom and lavatory; kitchen and pantry; store; canteen; air-conditioning duct and plant room; and the various service shafts.
Set the two side by side:
| IS 3861:2002, clause 5.2 | RERA 2016, s.2(k) | |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen and pantry | Excluded | Included |
| Bathroom and lavatory | Excluded | Included |
| Store | Excluded | Included |
| Internal partition walls | Deducted | Included |
| Corridors, staircases, lift shafts | Excluded | Excluded |
| Verandah | Excluded | Excluded only if exclusive |
The same flat has a materially larger carpet area under RERA than under IS 3861. A two-bedroom flat's kitchen, two bathrooms, store and internal walls can easily be 15–20% of its floor plate, all of it inside the RERA figure and all of it outside the IS 3861 figure.
So "carpet area" is not one number either. If a valuation, a bank technical report or an architect's drawing gives a carpet area materially below the RERA figure in your agreement, the likeliest explanation is not that someone is wrong. It is that the two documents are measuring under different definitions. Ask which. RERA does not use "plinth area" at all; that concept belongs to IS 3861 and to municipal bye-laws.
Section 2 of the RERA Act defines terms (a) through (zn), forty definitions in all. Carpet area is the only area-measurement term among them. "Built-up area", "super built-up area", "super area", "saleable area", "plinth area" and "loading factor" appear nowhere in the Act.
Nor are they defined in the Rules. What the Rules do is more interesting: they name three of them, once, purely in order to override them. Rule 4(3) of the state and Union Territory RERA Rules reads:
"The promoter shall disclose the size of the apartment based on carpet area even if earlier sold on any other basis such as super area, super built up area, built up area etc."
Maharashtra words it as Rule 4(3)(a) with the same effect. The drafting is deliberate: the law does not define super built-up area, it simply refuses to let it be the basis of disclosure.
The consequence for you. The loading factor is not a measurement. It is a commercial term, applied to a denominator that the law does not define, producing a number the law will not accept as the size of your flat.
The Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority, Gurugram issued the (Sale of Apartments/Floors in a Real Estate Project on the Basis of Carpet Area) Regulations, 2021, notification No. 22/RERA GGM Regulations 2021 dated 7 May 2021, published in the Haryana Government Gazette, Part III, 18 May 2021 at pages 183–187, under section 85(1) read with section 34(f) of the Act.
The regulations provide that "no apartment in a real estate project shall be sold on any other basis except on carpet area basis". Clause 2(v) classifies an agreement for sale on any other basis, "super area/covered area/sale area or any other nomenclature prevalent in the area", as an unfair or fraudulent practice. Clause 5(vi) bars real estate agents from facilitating a sale on super area, on pain of licence revocation. Clause 7 provides penalties of up to 5% of estimated project cost under sections 61 and 38.
Note the precise scope. These regulations govern the sale and the agreement, not advertising. Haryana's separate direction on advertisements (No. 3/RERA GGM Directions 2021, 22 February 2021) requires registration numbers and truthful claims but says nothing about carpet area. So in Gurugram a brochure may still quote super area; the agreement may not.
We found no equivalent prohibition in any other state. Reports that Delhi RERA has mandated carpet-area disclosure in advertisements could not be traced to any primary order, circular or notification, and this page does not repeat them.
Loading is defined against the super built-up figure, so:
Carpet area = super built-up × (1 − loading)
Super built-up = carpet area ÷ (1 − loading)
Loading = (super built-up − carpet) ÷ super built-up
A flat advertised at 1,200 sq ft super built-up, at an advertised ₹8,000 per square foot, a total of ₹96 lakh whatever the loading, delivers this much carpet area, and therefore costs this much per square foot of the space you can actually stand in:
| Loading | Carpet area you receive | Super built-up you pay for | Effective price on carpet, at ₹8,000/sq ft advertised |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 960 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹10,000 |
| 25% | 900 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹10,667 |
| 30% | 840 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹11,429 |
| 35% | 780 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹12,308 |
| 40% | 720 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹13,333 |
| 43% | 684 sq ft | 1,200 sq ft | ₹14,035 |
The total price does not move. What moves is what you get for it. At 20% loading you are paying ₹10,000 per square foot of real floor; at 43% you are paying ₹14,035 for the same rupee outlay, 40% more per usable square foot, for an identically-priced flat.
This is the single most useful calculation on this page. Two flats advertised at the same rate per square foot are not the same price until you have converted both to carpet.
There is no government statistic on loading, no RERA return that collects it, and no figure in any listed developer's filing that we could locate. The best-sourced number available is from a commercial research house and should be read as such:
ANAROCK Research, reported on the PTI wire on 9 June 2025, put average loading across India's top seven cities at 31% in 2019 rising to 40% in Q1 2025, Mumbai Metropolitan Region 43%, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR 41%, Pune 40%, Kolkata 39%, Hyderabad 38%, Chennai 36%. Prashant Thakur, ANAROCK's Regional Director and Head of Research, framed it as buyers now paying for 60% liveable space and 40% common areas.
Treat that as an attributed industry estimate, not a norm and not a fact of law. ANAROCK's own report and methodology were not publicly available; sample size and per-project computation are not disclosed in any source we could reach. Do not use it to argue that a specific loading is reasonable. Use it only to know roughly where the market sits before you ask your own question.
Nothing here is a claim that loading is unlawful or that developers are cheating. Loading is a disclosed, lawful commercial practice everywhere except Gurugram's agreements. The point is narrower and entirely practical: you cannot compare two prices until both are expressed against the same area, and the only area the law will stand behind is carpet area.
Indian plots are sold under names: "30 × 40 site", "200 gaj", "10 marla", "one ground". Two of those names are, in the most common cases, larger than the plot they describe. Both discrepancies are documented in official sources, both are exact, and neither appears on any converter page we could find.
| Dimensions (ft) | Square feet | Gaj | Square metres | Cent | Guntha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 × 30 | 600 | 66.6667 | 55.7418 | 1.3774 | 0.551 |
| 25 × 40 | 1,000 | 111.1111 | 92.903 | 2.2957 | 0.9183 |
| 30 × 40 | 1,200 | 133.3333 | 111.4836 | 2.7548 | 1.1019 |
| 30 × 50 | 1,500 | 166.6667 | 139.3546 | 3.4435 | 1.3774 |
| 30 × 60 | 1,800 | 200 | 167.2255 | 4.1322 | 1.6529 |
| 40 × 60 | 2,400 | 266.6667 | 222.9673 | 5.5096 | 2.2039 |
| 50 × 80 | 4,000 | 444.4444 | 371.6122 | 9.1827 | 3.6731 |
| 60 × 90 | 5,400 | 600 | 501.6764 | 12.3967 | 4.9587 |
Use this table when the dimensions are genuinely in feet, a privately laid-out plot, a north Indian colony, a measured site plan. Do not use it for a Bangalore Development Authority site. Here is why.
The Bangalore Development Authority allots sites in categories written 6 × 9, 9 × 12, 12 × 18 and 15 × 24. Those figures are metres, not feet. Everyone (buyers, brokers, and the BDA's own correspondence) calls them 20 × 30, 30 × 40, 40 × 60 and 50 × 80, in feet.
The two descriptions are not equivalent, and the Supreme Court's record shows them side by side. In The Commissioner, Bengaluru Development Authority v. T. Seetharamappa (Dead) Thr. LRs (order dated 14 May 2025), paragraph 4 records that "The BDA allotted different sites admeasuring 40x60 ft. to the private respondents in Anjanapura layout", while the allotment table in the same order, under the column headed "Measurement of site approx. sq.ft./sq.mtr.", records that same Anjanapura site as "12x18 Meters".
Convert the metric dimension and the gap appears:
| BDA site (metres) | Actual area (sq m) | Actual area (sq ft) | Called | Nominal (sq ft) | Shortfall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 × 9 | 54 | 581.2512 | 20 × 30 ft | 600 | 3.1248% |
| 9 × 12 | 108 | 1,162.5023 | 30 × 40 ft | 1,200 | 3.1248% |
| 12 × 18 | 216 | 2,325.0047 | 40 × 60 ft | 2,400 | 3.1248% |
| 15 × 24 | 360 | 3,875.0078 | 50 × 80 ft | 4,000 | 3.1248% |
Every one of them is short by exactly the same 3.1248%, and the reason is arithmetic rather than coincidence. The metric dimensions were obtained by converting feet to metres at 1 foot = 0.3 metre (a soft, rounded conversion) instead of the true 0.3048. Thirty feet became 9 metres rather than 9.144.
Since area scales as the square of length, the resulting site is exactly:
(0.3 ÷ 0.3048)² = (125 ÷ 127)² = 15,625 ÷ 16,129 = 0.9687519…
of the area its foot-name implies, a shortfall of exactly 504 ÷ 16,129 = 3.1248%, identical for every category, forever.
In practical terms: a "30 × 40" BDA site is 1,162.50 sq ft, not 1,200. A "40 × 60" is 2,325.00 sq ft, not 2,400. On a 40 × 60 site at ₹9,000 per square foot that is a difference of 75 square feet, or ₹6.75 lakh, between the name and the deed.
This does not mean anyone is being cheated. The allotment letter and the sale deed state the metric dimension, which is the binding one. It means the name is a nickname, and the nickname overstates the area by about 3%. Convert from the metric dimension on your document, never from the name.
The 30 × 50 site, widely advertised in Bengaluru, does not appear in the BDA category list. Treat it as a private-layout size and measure it rather than assuming.
Haryana's urban estates (HSVP, formerly HUDA) allot residential plots under names borrowed from the revenue system. The names do not carry the revenue values.
From the Haryana Urban Estates Department's own notification:
| HSVP plot | Dimensions (m) | Area (sq m) | Area (sq ft) | Gaj, exact | Gaj, as stated by HSVP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Kanal | 15 × 28 | 420 | 4,520.84 | 502.3158 | 502.28 |
| 14 Marla | 12 × 25 | 300 | 3,229.17 | 358.797 | 358.77 |
| 10 Marla | 9.5 × 22 | 209 | 2,249.66 | 249.9619 | 250 |
| 8 Marla | 9 × 18 | 162 | 1,743.75 | 193.7504 | 193.74 |
| 6 Marla | 7.7 × 18 | 138.6 | 1,491.88 | 165.7642 | 165.75 |
| 4 Marla | 6 × 15 | 90 | 968.75 | 107.6391 | 107.63 |
Read the first two columns together. "10 Marla" is 209 square metres, which HSVP itself states as 250 square yards. Ten revenue marlas, at the standard 66-inch karam, is 302.5 square yards. The same goes for the kanal:
| HSVP urban-estate plot | Revenue measure (66-in karam) | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 marla, square yards | 25 | 30.25 | −17.36% |
| 1 marla, square feet | 225 | 272.25 | −17.36% |
| 10 marla, square yards | 250 | 302.5 | −17.36% |
| 1 kanal, square yards | 502.32 | 605 | −16.97% |
An HSVP "10 marla" plot is about 17% smaller than ten revenue marlas. The HSVP marla is 25 square yards; the revenue marla is 30.25. The HSVP kanal is 420 square metres; the revenue kanal is 605 square yards, or 505.86 square metres.
Again, nobody is being defrauded. The allotment states the metric area and the square-yard equivalent, both correct for what is being sold. The trap is in comparison: a "10 marla" HSVP plot and a "10 marla" plot in a Haryana village jamabandi are not the same size, and quoting them at the same rate per marla values one of them 17% wrong.
A footnote on precision. HSVP's stated square-yard equivalents are each rounded slightly below the exact conversion. 420 sq m is 502.3158 sq yd, stated as 502.28; 209 sq m is 249.9619 sq yd, stated as 250. The differences are fractions of a square yard and matter to nobody. The metric figure is the one to convert from.
The Tamil Nadu Survey and Settlement Department publishes the conversion on its own website: 1 ground = 2,400 square feet, which is 222.9673 square metres exactly (the department states 222.96, truncating rather than rounding. 222.97 would be the rounded figure). This one is a genuine, unambiguous, exactly-2,400-square-foot unit.
| Grounds | Square feet | Square metres | Cent | Gaj |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,400 | 222.9673 | 5.5096 | 266.6667 |
| 2 | 4,800 | 445.9346 | 11.0193 | 533.3333 |
| 3 | 7,200 | 668.9019 | 16.5289 | 800 |
| 5 | 12,000 | 1,114.8365 | 27.5482 | 1,333.3333 |
| 10 | 24,000 | 2,229.673 | 55.0964 | 2,666.6667 |
The same official page rounds in three other places worth knowing about: it gives 1 ground = 5.5 cent where the exact figure is 5.5096 (2,400 ÷ 435.6 does not come out round); 1 cent = 435 square feet where the exact figure is 435.6; and 1 acre = 4046.82 square metres where the exact figure is 4,046.856. None of these matters on a single plot. All of them accumulate on a large one.
Ground is a market and conveyancing unit. The Tamil Nadu land record is in hectare-are-square metre, and the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building Rules 2019 use square metres throughout, in those rules the word "ground" appears only as ground floor and ground level, never as a unit of area.
Gaj is a real transactional unit, and it appears in official documents. The HSVP notification above states every plot size in square yards alongside the metric figure. But round gaj figures are a market convention, not an official plot category. No authority we could reach publishes plot categories as 100, 200 or 500 gaj. The DDA's categories are in square metres (below 32, above 32 to 50, above 50 to 100, and so on), NOIDA's are in square metres exclusively, and the Rajasthan Housing Board's are in square metres.
So when a plot is advertised as "200 gaj", that is the seller's description, not a category from an allotment schedule. It is worth 1,800 square feet exactly if the description is accurate. Measure, or read the deed.
One point that catches first-time plot buyers, stated once and then left alone because it varies by municipality.
A plot is measured to its outer boundary. The MoHUA Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 define a plot as "a parcel or piece of land enclosed by definite boundaries", and define the set-back line as one "beyond which nothing can be constructed towards the plot boundaries excepting with the permission of the Authority". Floor Area Ratio is then computed against the total area of the plot, and maximum ground coverage is expressed as a percentage of it.
So a 1,200 sq ft site is 1,200 square feet of land. How much of it you may build on, and how many floors, is set by ground coverage, FAR and setbacks in your municipality's bye-laws, not by this page, and not by any converter. Check the local bye-law before you assume a footprint.
Converters give you areas. Negotiations happen in rates. And rates convert the opposite way to areas, which is the single most common arithmetic error made at the point of sale.
Areas divide. Rates multiply.
If a square yard is 9 square feet, then 1,000 square feet is 111.11 square yards, you divided. But ₹5,000 per square foot is ₹45,000 per square yard, you multiplied. A bigger unit contains more area, so it costs more per unit.
Rate per larger unit = rate per square foot × (square feet in that unit)
At ₹5,000 per square foot, a round figure chosen to make the arithmetic legible, not a market rate:
| Quoted per | Equivalent to ₹5,000 per square foot | In words |
|---|---|---|
| Per gaj / square yard | ₹45,000 | n/a |
| Per square metre | ₹53,819.55 | n/a |
| Per cent / decimal / dismil | ₹21,78,000 | ₹21.78 lakh |
| Per guntha | ₹54,45,000 | ₹54.45 lakh |
| Per ground | ₹1,20,00,000 | ₹1.2 crore |
| Per are | ₹53,81,955.21 | ₹53.82 lakh |
| Per acre | ₹21,78,00,000 | ₹21.78 crore |
| Per hectare | ₹53,81,95,521 | ₹53.82 crore |
Worked example: two properties, two units, one comparison.
A buyer in Bengaluru is choosing between:
Put both on a per-square-foot basis. Property A, being a BDA site, is 9 × 12 metres = 1,162.50 sq ft, not the nominal 1,200. So ₹1,05,00,000 ÷ 1,162.50 = ₹9,032 per sq ft. Had the buyer used 1,200 sq ft, they would have computed ₹8,750 and understated the real rate by ₹282, or 3.2%.
Property B is 2.5 × 1,089 = 2,722.50 sq ft, so ₹78,00,000 ÷ 2,722.50 = ₹2,865 per sq ft.
Property B is 2.34 times the land at 32% of the rate. Whether that is the better buy depends on location and approvals, which no arithmetic will settle, but the buyer now knows what they are actually comparing, which the two headline prices concealed entirely.
The carpet-area adjustment applies here too. A flat quoted at ₹8,000 per square foot on super built-up, at 40% loading, is ₹13,333 per square foot of carpet. A flat quoted at ₹11,000 per square foot on carpet is cheaper. See Which Square Feet Are You Buying?.
This page states no market rate as a fact. The rupee figures above are illustrative, chosen to make the arithmetic legible.
It is a fair question, and no converter answers it.
The short version, if that is all you need. What the law says: the square foot appears nowhere in the Legal Metrology Act 2009 or its National Standards Rules 2011. India's statutory units of land area are the are and the hectare. What the record uses: not square feet, in any of the fourteen states checked. Most use hectare-are-square metre; the rest use acre-gunta, acre-decimal, kanal-marla or bigha. What you must do: convert. Your square-foot figure is fine to negotiate in, but it will be converted before it enters a document, and the conversion is where errors enter.
The rest of this section is the evidence for those three lines, with the statutes and the state-by-state check. The exceptions, the places where square feet genuinely is the official unit, are at the end.
India's units are set by the Legal Metrology Act 2009 and the Legal Metrology (National Standards) Rules 2011. Section 4 of the Act makes the base units metric; section 5 makes the base unit of length the metre.
The Rules' schedules then set out what else may be used. The Sixth Schedule, headed "Temporarily accepted Units" and read with Rule 17, contains this:
"4. Unit of land measurement – (1) The first unit for measurement of land area shall be the 'are' (Symbol : a). The 'are' is the area of a square with sides of length 10 metres. 1 a = dam² = 10² m² (2) The second unit for measurement of land area shall be hectare. (Symbol: ha) The hectare is the area of a square with sides of length 100 metres. 1 ha = 1 hm² = 10⁴ m² (3) The prefixes specified in the Third Schedule shall not be used with the 'are' or hectare."
Rule 17 adds that the Central Government "shall, at least once in every ten years after the commencement of these rules, review the need, or otherwise, for the continuance for general use of such units".
Now search the same Rules for the words foot, feet, square foot, square feet, yard, square yard, and for acre. None of them appears anywhere. The Legal Metrology Act 2009 does not contain them either. India's statutory units of land area are the are and the hectare, and the are holds its place on a ten-yearly review.
This is the same finding the Ares page reports from the other direction: the are is named in Indian law as the first unit of land measurement, while the acre, and the square foot, are not named at all.
The live prohibition is section 11 of the Legal Metrology Act 2009, "Prohibition of quotation, etc., otherwise than in terms of standard units of weight, measure or numeration":
"(1) No person shall, in relation to any goods, things or service, (a) quote, or make announcement of, whether by word of mouth or otherwise, any price or charge, or (b) issue or exhibit any price list, invoice, cash memo or other document, or (c) prepare or publish any advertisement, poster or other document, or (d) indicate the net quantity of a pre-packaged commodity, or (e) express in relation to any transaction or protection, any quantity or dimension, otherwise than in accordance with the standard unit of weight, measure or numeration."
Clauses (b), (c) and (e) reach price lists, advertisements and any expressed "quantity or dimension". No imperial unit had to be banned by name. The prohibition works through the definition of standard unit, and the square foot is not one.
Note the current penalty, because most sources online are out of date. Section 25 formerly provided a fine up to ₹25,000. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2026, passed by the Lok Sabha on 1 April 2026 and the Rajya Sabha on 2 April 2026, replaced it with a graduated mechanism: an improvement notice for a first offence, a penalty up to ₹1 lakh for a second, and not less than ₹2 lakh and up to ₹5 lakh for subsequent offences. Any page still quoting ₹25,000 is describing superseded law.
We are not aware of any prosecution of a builder or broker for quoting in square feet, and this page is not suggesting one is likely. The practical position is simply that square feet has no statutory footing, which is why it does not appear in the record.
We checked fourteen jurisdictions against government sources, chiefly the Department of Land Resources' 2024–25 Evaluation of Quality of Land Records state reports and CAG audit reports, both of which quote the record columns.
| State | Unit in the record of rights |
|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | Hectare (khatauni column headed "Area (Hect.)") |
| Uttarakhand | Hectare |
| Maharashtra | Hectare-are-square metre for agricultural land; are-square metre for non-agricultural |
| Karnataka | Acre – gunta – anna – paisa (RTC) |
| Telangana | Acres and guntas |
| Andhra Pradesh | Acres and cents |
| West Bengal | Acre and decimal (satak) |
| Bihar | Acres, decimals and hectares |
| Gujarat | Hectare / are / square metre |
| Kerala | Hectare / are / square metre (Field Register Form No. 50 has a column for each) |
| Tamil Nadu | Rural hectare-are; urban hectare-are-square metre; natham square metre |
| Punjab | Metric by rule since 1976-77; kanal-marla-sarsahi in practice |
| Haryana | Kanal and marla in practice |
| Rajasthan | Bigha, with hectare conversions |
Not one displays square feet. Where square feet appears in a government land-records document at all, it appears as an explanation, an evaluation of Bihar's land records footnotes that "One decimal of land is equal to 435.6 square feet or 0.01 acres", never as the recorded unit.
The Tamil Nadu land-records study is unusually candid about the gap between record and market, observing that the record is in hectare-are-square metre while "now, the land measurement mentioned in Square foot for residential land or commercial lands and Acer or cent for agriculture land".
Punjab's own Land Records Manual is the sharpest illustration. Chapter 7 provides that "From the agricultural year 1976-77, metric measure shall only be used and the local measure shall be discontinued altogether", and Chapter 9 requires the field kanungo to satisfy himself "that areas have been correctly converted into hectares from the local standard". A 2025 NCAER field study for the Department of Land Resources nonetheless found that in Punjab "The commonly used units of land measurement are Bigha, Kanal and Marla." Fifty years after the rule, practice has not followed.
One caution about government documents. The DoLR's Uttar Pradesh report states "1 Hectare is 2.5 Acres". That is a rounding; the correct figure is 2.4711 acres. A hectare is 1.2% smaller than two and a half acres. Do not carry the 2.5 into a calculation, even though it appears in an official report.
It is not nowhere. Square feet is the unit of several genuinely official Indian instruments, just not of the land record.
| Instrument | Unit | Source |
|---|---|---|
| BBMP property tax, Bengaluru | Square feet; the rate table column is headed "Unit Area Value per square feet per month (in Rs.)" | BBMP Annexure-II |
| Greater Chennai Corporation property tax | Square feet, "the Streetwise basic rate per square feet" | GCC property tax base rate |
| Karnataka guidance values | Square feet for sites, acres for land | CAG Karnataka Report No. 5 of 2016: "The estimated guidance values were expressed in units of acres for land and square feet for sites." |
| Telangana registration portal | Offers "Sq. Yards" and "Sq. Feets" as input units for market value | Telangana Registration Dept market value page |
| MCD and NDMC property tax, Delhi | Square metre, "Unit Area Values : (in Rs. per Sq. metre)" | MCD rulebook; NDMC return form |
| DDA, NOIDA, Rajasthan Housing Board allotments | Square metre | DDA Handbook 2021; CAG NOIDA pricing audit |
| MoHUA Model Building Bye-Laws 2016; FAR and FSI | Square metre throughout | MBBL 2016 |
So the honest summary is this. Bengaluru and Chennai levy property tax per square foot; Delhi levies it per square metre. Karnataka publishes guidance values for sites per square foot. Everything structural (allotments, building bye-laws, FAR, and every state's record of rights) is metric or traditional.
There is a small piece of direct evidence that citizens arrive holding square-foot figures and the state converts them: the NDMC property tax return form itself prints the conversion, "1. sq.yard = 0.8361 sq. mtr. 1 sq.foot = 0.0929 sq. mtr.", on the form.
Because this determines what unit you will need at registration:
| Jurisdiction | Official rate published per |
|---|---|
| Delhi | Square metre for land and built property; acre for agricultural land |
| Uttar Pradesh | Square metre (collector rate list) |
| Maharashtra | Square metre (Annual Statement of Rates) |
| Gujarat | Square metre (jantri) |
| Karnataka | Square foot for sites; acre for land; cent in Mangaluru and Udupi; guntha for converted land in Bengaluru |
| Bihar | Decimal (Minimum Value Register) |
| Telangana | Acre for agricultural land; square yard for urban government land |
Haryana's collector-rate denominator could not be verified from a government source and is not stated here.
Your square-foot figure is real, useful and how the market talks. But before it enters a document it will almost always be converted, into square metres for a RERA agreement or a municipal filing, into hectares or acres-and-guntas for a mutation, into decimals in Bihar. The conversion is where errors enter. That is what the tables on this page are for.
Every number on this page rests on one value: 1 foot = 0.3048 metre, exactly. It is worth two minutes to know where that comes from, and to dispose of a question that occasionally worries people.
Before 1959 the British and American definitions of the yard differed slightly. The International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959 fixed 1 yard = 0.9144 metre exactly, and therefore 1 foot = 0.3048 metre and 1 inch = 2.54 cm, all by definition rather than by measurement. The US notice, Refinement of Values for the Yard and the Pound, took effect on 1 July 1959 (24 FR 5348).
Because the foot is defined exactly, the square foot is too: 0.3048² = 0.09290304 square metres, exactly. Nothing on this page has been rounded on the way in.
India was not a signatory. The six signatories were the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
This is the part where we have to be honest about a gap.
We could not locate any Indian law that adopts the international foot. The nearest instrument is IS 786:1967, Conversion Factors and Conversion Tables (First Revision), a Bureau of Indian Standards publication. Its clause 2.1 gives 1 inch = 25.4 millimetres in bold, the standard's typographic convention for an exact value, on the authority of ISO Recommendation No. 31. Since the same standard defines a foot as twelve inches, an exact 25.4 mm inch entails a foot of exactly 0.3048 m.
But entailment is not adoption. IS 786 never states a foot-to-metre factor directly, never mentions the 1959 agreement, never distinguishes the international foot from the US survey foot, and is in any case a voluntary standard rather than law. Its own treatment of the pound gives the game away: it uses 0.4535924 kg, described as a rounding "of the value recommended by ISO", rather than the 1959 exact value of 0.45359237, which suggests India was working from ISO recommendations rather than from the 1959 agreement.
There is one place the answer might sit. Section 16(1) of the Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1956 provides that values "in terms of any measure expressed in inches, feet, yards or miles" may be converted "at the rates specified in the First Schedule". If India ever fixed a foot-to-metre value in law, the First Schedule to that Act is where it is. We could not obtain the text of that Schedule from any accessible source, and we are not going to guess what it says. If a reader has a scanned gazette copy of Act 89 of 1956 complete with schedules, we would like to see it.
What we can say: no Survey of India circular and no CSIR-NPL statement specifying a foot conversion factor could be found either.
There was a second foot. The US survey foot was 1200/3937 metre, very slightly longer than the international foot. The United States retired it: NIST and NOAA published a final determination on 5 October 2020 (85 FR 62698), following a request for comment on 17 October 2019 (84 FR 55562), deprecating the US survey foot with effect from 31 December 2022.
The difference is beautifully clean:
(1200 ÷ 3937) ÷ 0.3048 = 500,000 ÷ 499,999
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Length ratio | 1.000002000004… |
| Length difference | 2.000004 parts per million |
| Area ratio (the square) | 1.000004000012… |
| Area difference | 4.000012 parts per million |
Note that the area difference is 4 ppm, not 2. Area scales as the square of length, so the discrepancy doubles. This is a small point that is routinely got wrong, and the Acre page covers it in more detail.
Cross-checked against NIST's own published acre values (4,046.8564224 m² on the international foot and 4,046.872609874 m² on the survey foot) the ratio computes to 4.0000119 ppm, agreeing to every digit NIST publishes.
What 4 ppm looks like: 0.04 square metres per hectare. About 0.174 square feet per acre, less than a fifth of a square foot on a full acre. Two millimetres per kilometre of length.
It has never mattered to an Indian property transaction and it never will. The survey foot was an American surveying convention; the deprecation was driven by the geodetic community, where it mattered on large state-plane coordinate values, not by conveyancing. If a converter or a forum post has you worried about which foot your plot was measured in, stop. Every figure on this page uses the international foot, and at parcel scale the other one would have given the same answer to more decimal places than anyone measures.
Every warning on this page, in one place.
Ten square feet is an area of ten square feet, roughly a 3 ft × 3 ft patch.
Ten feet square is a square ten feet on each side, which is 100 square feet.
A factor of ten, hiding in word order. The same trap appears as "thirty by forty" versus "thirty forty" in spoken quotes. When someone gives you a size in speech, ask whether that is the area or the sides, and write down which.
| Said | Means | Square feet |
|---|---|---|
| 10 square feet | An area | 10 |
| 10 feet square | A 10 × 10 square | 100 |
| 30 × 40 feet | A rectangle | 1,200 |
| 30 square feet × 40 | Meaningless, ask again | n/a |
The square foot is the smallest unit in common Indian property use. Every unit on this page except the square inch and the square centimetre is larger than it. So nearly every conversion out of square feet is a division, and the answer must come out smaller.
The sanity rule: if the unit you are converting to is bigger than a square foot, your number must get smaller. If it got bigger, you multiplied when you should have divided.
This error is easy to miss precisely because the square foot has no regional variation. On the bigha page a wrong answer looks wrong because you know the bigha varies. Here the arithmetic looks clean and the result is out by a factor of 43,560.
| Question | Wrong | Right |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 sq ft in acres | 435,600,000 | 0.229568 |
| 2,000 sq ft in gaj | 18,000 | 222.22 |
| 5,000 sq ft in cents | 21,78,000 | 11.478 |
| 1,200 sq ft in square metres | 12,916.7 | 111.48 |
Two flats, both advertised at ₹9,000 per square foot. One is quoted on super built-up at 40% loading; the other is quoted on carpet.
The first costs ₹9,000 ÷ 0.60 = ₹15,000 per square foot of carpet. The second costs ₹9,000. The first is 67% more expensive, and the advertised rates are identical.
Convert both to carpet before you compare anything. See Which Square Feet Are You Buying? for the full arithmetic and the legal position.
Only questions the page has not already answered.
133.33 gaj (square yards). Divide by 9: 1,200 ÷ 9 = 133.3333. It is not a round figure, which is why 1,200 sq ft flats are never advertised in gaj. The nearest round gaj sizes are 133 gaj (1,197 sq ft) and 134 gaj (1,206 sq ft).
Only if the dimensions are genuinely in feet. A privately laid-out 30 ft × 40 ft plot is exactly 1,200 sq ft. A Bangalore Development Authority "30 × 40" site is 9 × 12 metres = 1,162.50 sq ft, 3.1248% less, because BDA converted at 1 ft = 0.3 m. Read the dimension on your allotment letter or deed, not the nickname. Full explanation.
In modern Indian property, yes, 1 gaj = 1 square yard = 9 square feet exactly. Historically gaz was a unit of length, and that older sense is the source of a good deal of confusion in nineteenth-century revenue documents. It has no effect on a present-day transaction.
Because square feet is not a standard unit under Indian law and square metres is. The Legal Metrology Act 2009 makes metric units the standard, and section 11 prohibits expressing a quantity or dimension otherwise. Maharashtra's model agreement for sale, for example, is drafted entirely in square metres. Uttar Pradesh's model agreement is unusual in giving both: "carpet area of ……… square meters (……… square feet)".
Expect a small rounding gap. A whole square metre is 10.76 square feet, so an agreement stating carpet area to the nearest square metre carries about ±5.4 sq ft of rounding. The agreement's figure is the one that binds you.
The area that goes into the record will be converted into whatever unit that state's record uses. Hectare-are-square metre in most states, acre-gunta in Karnataka and Telangana, acre-decimal in West Bengal and Bihar, kanal-marla in Punjab and Haryana. No state's record of rights displays square feet. Your square-foot figure is fine to negotiate in; it will not survive into the record unconverted.
Stamp duty is a separate question and the unit varies: Karnataka publishes guidance values for sites per square foot, Delhi, UP, Maharashtra and Gujarat publish per square metre, and Bihar publishes per decimal.
No, and the gap is usually 10–20% before super built-up loading is added on top. Carpet area is the only one of the two defined in law, RERA 2016 section 2(k). Built-up area has no statutory definition anywhere in the Act or the Rules.
There is a further trap: "carpet area" itself has two meanings in India. The RERA definition includes kitchens, bathrooms, stores and internal partition walls. The older Indian Standard IS 3861:2002 excludes all four. A valuer's carpet area and your agreement's carpet area can legitimately differ for that reason. The comparison table is here.
There is no single answer, and any page that gives you one has guessed. The verified values run from 6,806.25 sq ft in the Uttarakhand hills to 27,225 sq ft in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Patna and Rajasthan, with district variants in Bihar reaching 65,340. Find your region in the matrix, or read the Bigha page in full.
Use whatever your state's record and your registering authority use. That is the figure that will be checked. Convert into it from square feet, keep the square-foot figure for negotiation, and where an authority publishes a required unit (square metres for a RERA agreement, decimals for a Bihar minimum-value calculation) use theirs.
This page converts numbers. It is not legal advice, and a converter is never a substitute for the applicable record, the registering authority, or a lawyer on a transaction that matters.
Two exact values anchor the whole page:
Every other figure was derived from those two in exact rational arithmetic (Python fractions.Fraction, never floating point), and rounded once, at the moment of display. Each table was then parsed back out of the finished article, each unit re-resolved from the factor store, and every cell recomputed at the decimal precision it is displayed to, using round-half-up. 725 table cells were checked this way. Separately, 143 independent checks were run against the numbers written into the prose (every worked example, every percentage, every derived ratio) recomputed from first principles rather than from the tables. Errors found at delivery: 0.
Values marked Exact in the tables terminate and can be written down completely. Values marked Recurring have been truncated for display. The distinction is not cosmetic: only six of the twenty-one conversions in the instant-answer table are exact, and every one of those is either a metric relationship or a whole-number multiple of the square foot.
Law and rules
Standards
Government records and audits
Attributed industry estimate
Published here rather than filled in with something plausible.
Points established here that we could not find published anywhere else:
If any figure, citation or reading on this page is wrong, we want to fix it. The material most likely to need correcting is the unverified list above, particularly the First Schedule to the 1956 Act, which would settle the foot question outright.
| Conversion | 1 Square Feet | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Acre | 0.0000230 | Recurring; Exact by definition: 43,560 sq ft = 4,840 sq yd |
| Ankanam | 0.013889 (Standard) | Region-specific; also 0.027778 (Tirupati) |
| Ares | 0.0009290304 | Exact; 100 m², the metric are |
| Bigha | 0.0000367 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) | Region-specific; also 0.000110 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 0.000147 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) · 0.0000574 (Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai) |
| Biswa | 0.000735 (UP / Rajasthan pucca) | Region-specific; also 0.001148 (Rajasthan kachha) · 0.002204 (Punjab / Haryana old records) · 0.002296 (Himachal Pradesh) |
| Biswa Kacha | 0.002204 (Punjab / Haryana revenue definition) | Region-specific; also 0.001148 (Rajasthan kachha reading) |
| Cent | 0.002296 | Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly |
| Chatak | 0.022222 | Recurring; 5 sq yd exactly; 16 to the cottah, 968 to the acre. Reported, not stated by any instrument located |
| Decimal | 0.002296 | Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly |
| Dhur | 0.014692 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)) | Region-specific; also 0.277778 (Tripura) |
| Dismil | 0.002296 | Recurring; The decimal under another name |
| Gaj | 0.111111 | Recurring; The square yard, 9 sq ft |
| Gajam | 0.111111 | Recurring; The square yard in Telugu, 9 sq ft |
| Ground | 0.000417 | Recurring; 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 | 0.000918 | Recurring; 121 sq yd; 40 guntha = 1 acre exactly |
| Hectare | 0.000009290304 | Exact; 10,000 m² exactly |
| Kanal | 0.000184 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 0.000222 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.000242 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.000274 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Katha | 0.000735 (Bihar state standard) | Region-specific; also 0.001389 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 0.000347 (Assam) · 0.000574 (Bihar (Chhapra)) |
| Killa | 0.0000230 | Recurring; The acre under its Punjabi name |
| Lessa | 0.006944 | Recurring; The 12-foot mauzadari jar squared (Assam Land Records Manual r.117); 20 to a katha, 100 to a bigha |
| Marla | 0.003673 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 0.004444 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.004839 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.005487 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Murabba | 0.000000918 (Punjab canal colony) | Region-specific; also 0.00000147 (Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal)) |
| Nali | 0.000463 | Recurring; 240 sq yd; 16 mutthi of 135 sq ft. No instrument located states the figure |
| Perch | 0.003673 | Recurring; 30.25 sq yd; 160 perches = 1 acre |
| Pura | 0.0000174 | Recurring; 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 | 929.0304 | Exact; One ten-thousandth of a square metre |
| Square Inch | 144 | Exact; One 144th of a square foot |
| Square Karam | 0.033058 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 0.04 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.043554 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.049383 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Square Kilometer | 0.00000009290304 | Exact; 1,000,000 m² |
| Square Meter | 0.09290304 | Exact; The SI unit of area |
| Square Mile | 0.0000000359 | 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 | 0.111111 | Recurring; 9 sq ft exactly |
1 square foot = 0.013889 ankanam on the Standard definition. The ankanam has no single national value. It is also 0.027778 (Tirupati) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
72 square feet to the standard ankanam, a 12 × 6 foot bay, eight square yards. Around Tirupati the ankanam is 36 square feet, exactly half, so an ankanam figure from that belt converts to half the area it would elsewhere.
Where the ankanam fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Guntha, Ground, Ankanam and Chatak above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Ankanam = Square Feet ÷ 72 (Standard)
| Square Feet | Ankanam (Standard) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.013889 |
| 2 | 0.027778 |
| 3 | 0.041667 |
| 5 | 0.069444 |
| 10 | 0.138889 |
| 20 | 0.277778 |
| 50 | 0.694444 |
| 100 | 1.388889 |
| 200 | 2.777778 |
| 500 | 6.944444 |
| 1,000 | 13.888889 |
| Ankanam definition | Where it applies | 1 ankanam in sq ft | Ankanam per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (the definition used here) | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, parts of Karnataka | 72 | 0.013889 | Recurring | sourced |
| Tirupati | Tirupati and parts of Chittoor | 36 | 0.027778 | Recurring | sourced |
| Square Feet | Ankanam (36 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.027778 |
| 2 | 0.055556 |
| 3 | 0.083333 |
| 5 | 0.138889 |
| 10 | 0.277778 |
| 20 | 0.555556 |
| 50 | 1.388889 |
| 100 | 2.777778 |
| 200 | 5.555556 |
| 500 | 13.888889 |
| 1,000 | 27.777778 |
5 square feet ÷ 72 = 0.069444 ankanam
Square Feet = Ankanam × 72 (Standard)
Square Feet = Ankanam × 36 (Tirupati)
1 square foot = 0.0009290304 ares, exact. An are is 100 m², the metric are.
A square foot is 0.0009290304 ares. The are appears in Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra records, and on a 7/12 extract it sits next to the guntha, which is 1.17% larger and not the same thing.
The ratio is the fraction 145,161/156,250,000, or 0.0009290304 exactly.
Ares = Square Feet × 0.0009290304
| Square Feet | Ares |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0009290304 |
| 2 | 0.0018580608 |
| 3 | 0.0027870912 |
| 5 | 0.004645152 |
| 10 | 0.009290304 |
| 20 | 0.018580608 |
| 50 | 0.04645152 |
| 100 | 0.09290304 |
| 200 | 0.18580608 |
| 500 | 0.4645152 |
| 1,000 | 0.9290304 |
5 square feet × 0.0009290304 = 0.004645152 ares
Square Feet = Ares ÷ 0.0009290304
1 square foot = 0.0000367 bigha on the UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca definition. The bigha has no single national value. It is also 0.000110 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 0.000147 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) · 0.0000574 (Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai) and 5 more per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
From 6,806.25 square feet to 27,225 depending on the district, a factor of four. There is no national bigha, and a converter that offers one number is guessing which state you are in.
Where the bigha fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Bigha, Katha, Biswa and Dhur above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Bigha = Square Feet ÷ 27,225 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca)
| Square Feet | Bigha (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0000367 |
| 2 | 0.0000735 |
| 3 | 0.000110 |
| 5 | 0.000184 |
| 10 | 0.000367 |
| 20 | 0.000735 |
| 50 | 0.001837 |
| 100 | 0.003673 |
| 200 | 0.007346 |
| 500 | 0.018365 |
| 1,000 | 0.036731 |
| Bigha definition | Where it applies | 1 bigha in sq ft | Bigha per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca (the definition used here) | Purvanchal, Awadh, Patna belt, east Rajasthan | 27,225 | 0.0000367 | Recurring | sourced |
| UP kachha (6⅔ biswa) | West Uttar Pradesh | 9,075 | 0.000110 | Recurring | sourced |
| UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills | West UP, Kumaon and Garhwal hills | 6,806.25 | 0.000147 | Recurring | sourced |
| Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai | Marwar, Gujarat, Terai | 17,424 | 0.0000574 | Recurring | sourced |
| Madhya Pradesh | Madhya Pradesh | 12,000 | 0.0000833 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand | West Bengal, Assam, Ranchi | 14,400 | 0.0000694 | Recurring | sourced |
| Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt | Himachal Pradesh, Rohtak, Hisar | 8,712 | 0.000115 | Recurring | sourced |
| Punjab / west Haryana | Punjab, kanal belt of Haryana | 21,780 | 0.0000459 | Recurring | sourced |
| Haryana Ambala belt | Ambala, Gurugram, Faridabad, Karnal, Panipat | 8,100 | 0.000123 | 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.
5 square feet ÷ 27,225 = 0.000184 bigha
Square Feet = Bigha × 27,225 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca)
Square Feet = Bigha × 9,075 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa))
Square Feet = Bigha × 6,806.25 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills)
Square Feet = Bigha × 17,424 (Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai)
Square Feet = Bigha × 12,000 (Madhya Pradesh)
Square Feet = Bigha × 14,400 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)
Square Feet = Bigha × 8,712 (Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt)
Square Feet = Bigha × 21,780 (Punjab / west Haryana)
Square Feet = Bigha × 8,100 (Haryana Ambala belt)
1 square foot = 0.000735 biswa on the UP / Rajasthan pucca definition. The biswa has no single national value. It is also 0.001148 (Rajasthan kachha) · 0.002204 (Punjab / Haryana old records) · 0.002296 (Himachal Pradesh) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
Four values, none national: 1,361.25 square feet in the UP and east-Rajasthan pucca reading, 871.2 in Marwar, 453.75 in Punjab and Haryana, 435.6 in Himachal. Two of the four are attested by a court and two are not: the UP pucca biswa by the Supreme Court in Satish v. State of U.P. (2009), and the Punjab biswa by the P&H High Court in GMADA v. Hardip Kaur Gill (2025). No instrument was located for the Marwar or the Himachal reading. The Biswa page grades each of the four.
Where the biswa fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Bigha, Katha, Biswa and Dhur above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 4/5,445, 0.00073462…, which recurs.
Biswa = Square Feet ÷ 1,361.25 (UP / Rajasthan pucca)
| Square Feet | Biswa (UP / Rajasthan pucca) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000735 |
| 2 | 0.001469 |
| 3 | 0.002204 |
| 5 | 0.003673 |
| 10 | 0.007346 |
| 20 | 0.014692 |
| 50 | 0.036731 |
| 100 | 0.073462 |
| 200 | 0.146924 |
| 500 | 0.367309 |
| 1,000 | 0.734619 |
| Biswa definition | Where it applies | 1 biswa in sq ft | Biswa per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UP / Rajasthan pucca (the definition used here) | Uttar Pradesh, east Rajasthan | 1,361.25 | 0.000735 | Recurring | sourced |
| Rajasthan kachha | Marwar | 871.2 | 0.001148 | Recurring | no instrument located |
| Punjab / Haryana old records | Punjab, Haryana | 453.75 | 0.002204 | Recurring | sourced |
| Himachal Pradesh | Himachal Pradesh | 435.6 | 0.002296 | Recurring | no instrument located |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 2 of the 4 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.
| Square Feet | Biswa (871.2 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.001148 |
| 2 | 0.002296 |
| 3 | 0.003444 |
| 5 | 0.005739 |
| 10 | 0.011478 |
| 20 | 0.022957 |
| 50 | 0.057392 |
| 100 | 0.114784 |
| 200 | 0.229568 |
| 500 | 0.573921 |
| 1,000 | 1.147842 |
| Square Feet | Biswa (453.75 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.002204 |
| 2 | 0.004408 |
| 3 | 0.006612 |
| 5 | 0.011019 |
| 10 | 0.022039 |
| 20 | 0.044077 |
| 50 | 0.110193 |
| 100 | 0.220386 |
| 200 | 0.440771 |
| 500 | 1.101928 |
| 1,000 | 2.203857 |
| Square Feet | Biswa (435.6 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.002296 |
| 2 | 0.004591 |
| 3 | 0.006887 |
| 5 | 0.011478 |
| 10 | 0.022957 |
| 20 | 0.045914 |
| 50 | 0.114784 |
| 100 | 0.229568 |
| 200 | 0.459137 |
| 500 | 1.147842 |
| 1,000 | 2.295684 |
5 square feet ÷ 1,361.25 = 0.003673 biswa
Square Feet = Biswa × 1,361.25 (UP / Rajasthan pucca)
Square Feet = Biswa × 871.2 (Rajasthan kachha)
Square Feet = Biswa × 453.75 (Punjab / Haryana old records)
Square Feet = Biswa × 435.6 (Himachal Pradesh)
1 square foot = 0.002204 biswa kacha on the Punjab / Haryana revenue definition. The biswa kacha has no single national value. It is also 0.001148 (Rajasthan kachha reading) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
453.75 square feet on the Punjab and Haryana revenue reading, fifteen square karam, exactly 1/96 of an acre.
The ratio is the fraction 4/1,815, 0.00220386…, which recurs.
Biswa Kacha = Square Feet ÷ 453.75 (Punjab / Haryana revenue definition)
453.75 square feet either way, so the Square Feet to Biswa, Punjab / Haryana old records figures apply unchanged. What differs between the two is the record each word belongs to, not the size.
| Biswa Kacha definition | Where it applies | 1 biswa kacha in sq ft | Biswa Kacha per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punjab / Haryana revenue definition (the definition used here) | Punjab, Haryana | 453.75 | 0.002204 | Recurring | sourced |
| Rajasthan kachha reading | Marwar | 871.2 | 0.001148 | Recurring | no instrument located |
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.
871.2 square feet either way, so the Square Feet to Biswa, Rajasthan kachha figures apply unchanged. What differs between the two is the record each word belongs to, not the size.
5 square feet ÷ 453.75 = 0.011019 biswa kacha
Square Feet = Biswa Kacha × 453.75 (Punjab / Haryana revenue definition)
Square Feet = Biswa Kacha × 871.2 (Rajasthan kachha reading)
1 square foot = 0.002296 cents, recurring. A cent is one hundredth of an acre, exactly.
435.6 square feet to the cent. In Kerala and Tamil Nadu land is advertised in cents and built area in square feet, so a buyer needs both figures for the same transaction, the plot in cents, the house on it in square feet.
Where the cent fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Cent, Decimal and Dismil above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 5/2,178, 0.00229568…, which recurs.
Cent = Square Feet ÷ 435.6
435.6 square feet either way, so the Square Feet to Biswa, Himachal Pradesh figures apply unchanged. What differs between the two is the record each word belongs to, not the size.
5 square feet ÷ 435.6 = 0.011478 cents
Square Feet = Cent × 435.6
1 square foot = 0.022222 chatak, recurring. A chatak is 5 sq yd exactly; 16 to the cottah, 968 to the acre. Reported, not stated by any instrument located.
45 square feet to the chatak, five square yards. Sixteen make a West Bengal katha and 320 a Bengal bigha.
Where the chatak fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Guntha, Ground, Ankanam and Chatak above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Chatak = Square Feet ÷ 45
| Square Feet | Chatak |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.022222 |
| 2 | 0.044444 |
| 3 | 0.066667 |
| 5 | 0.111111 |
| 10 | 0.222222 |
| 20 | 0.444444 |
| 50 | 1.111111 |
| 100 | 2.222222 |
| 200 | 4.444444 |
| 500 | 11.111111 |
| 1,000 | 22.222222 |
5 square feet ÷ 45 = 0.111111 chatak
Square Feet = Chatak × 45
1 square foot = 0.014692 dhur on the Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain) definition. The dhur has no single national value. It is also 0.277778 (Tripura) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
68.0625 square feet on the Patna chain and 3.6 in Tripura, and a Jharkhand court has worked on 36. The first two are unrelated units that share a name, and no chain connects them.
Where the dhur fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Bigha, Katha, Biswa and Dhur above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 16/1,089, 0.01469238…, which recurs.
Dhur = Square Feet ÷ 68.0625 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain))
| Square Feet | Dhur (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.014692 |
| 2 | 0.029385 |
| 3 | 0.044077 |
| 5 | 0.073462 |
| 10 | 0.146924 |
| 20 | 0.293848 |
| 50 | 0.734619 |
| 100 | 1.469238 |
| 200 | 2.938476 |
| 500 | 7.346189 |
| 1,000 | 14.692378 |
| Dhur definition | Where it applies | 1 dhur in sq ft | Dhur per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain) (the definition used here) | Patna belt, and Jharkhand districts counting in the Patna katha | 68.0625 | 0.014692 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Tripura | Tripura | 3.6 | 0.277778 | Recurring | 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.
| Square Feet | Dhur (3.6 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.277778 |
| 2 | 0.555556 |
| 3 | 0.833333 |
| 5 | 1.388889 |
| 10 | 2.777778 |
| 20 | 5.555556 |
| 50 | 13.888889 |
| 100 | 27.777778 |
| 200 | 55.555556 |
| 500 | 138.888889 |
| 1,000 | 277.777778 |
5 square feet ÷ 68.0625 = 0.073462 dhur
Square Feet = Dhur × 68.0625 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain))
Square Feet = Dhur × 3.6 (Tripura)
1 square foot = 0.111111 gaj, recurring. A gaj is the square yard, 9 sq ft.
Nine square feet to the gaj. In market usage across north India gaj means the square yard; a 200-gaj plot is 1,800 square feet.
Where the gaj fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Gaj and Square Yard above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Gaj = Square Feet ÷ 9
| Square Feet | Gaj |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.111111 |
| 2 | 0.222222 |
| 3 | 0.333333 |
| 5 | 0.555556 |
| 10 | 1.111111 |
| 20 | 2.222222 |
| 50 | 5.555556 |
| 100 | 11.111111 |
| 200 | 22.222222 |
| 500 | 55.555556 |
| 1,000 | 111.111111 |
5 square feet ÷ 9 = 0.555556 gaj
Square Feet = Gaj × 9
1 square foot = 0.000417 grounds, recurring. A ground is 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)".
2,400 square feet to the ground, exactly and everywhere it is used. The ground is a Chennai plot unit defined directly in square feet rather than through a chain of sub-units, which is why it has no regional variation at all.
Where the ground fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Guntha, Ground, Ankanam and Chatak above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Ground = Square Feet ÷ 2,400
| Square Feet | Ground |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000417 |
| 2 | 0.000833 |
| 3 | 0.00125 |
| 5 | 0.002083 |
| 10 | 0.004167 |
| 20 | 0.008333 |
| 50 | 0.020833 |
| 100 | 0.041667 |
| 200 | 0.083333 |
| 500 | 0.208333 |
| 1,000 | 0.416667 |
5 square feet ÷ 2,400 = 0.002083 grounds
Square Feet = Ground × 2,400
1 square foot = 0.000918 gunthas, recurring. A guntha is 121 sq yd; 40 guntha = 1 acre exactly.
1,089 square feet to the guntha, 33 feet square. A guntha is the square of a third of a Gunter's chain, which is why the number is a perfect square and why forty of them make an acre exactly.
Where the guntha fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Guntha, Ground, Ankanam and Chatak above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Guntha = Square Feet ÷ 1,089
| Square Feet | Guntha |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000918 |
| 2 | 0.001837 |
| 3 | 0.002755 |
| 5 | 0.004591 |
| 10 | 0.009183 |
| 20 | 0.018365 |
| 50 | 0.045914 |
| 100 | 0.091827 |
| 200 | 0.183655 |
| 500 | 0.459137 |
| 1,000 | 0.918274 |
5 square feet ÷ 1,089 = 0.004591 gunthas
Square Feet = Guntha × 1,089
1 square foot = 0.000009290304 hectares, exact. A hectare is 10,000 m² exactly.
A hectare is 107,639.104167… square feet, and the decimal recurs. The exact statement runs the other way: one square foot is 0.09290304 square metres exactly, and a hectare is ten thousand of those.
Where the hectare fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Hectare, Are, Square Kilometer and Square Mile above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 145,161/15,625,000,000, or 0.000009290304 exactly.
Hectare = Square Feet × 0.000009290304
| Square Feet | Hectare |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000009290304 |
| 2 | 0.000018580608 |
| 3 | 0.000027870912 |
| 5 | 0.00004645152 |
| 10 | 0.00009290304 |
| 20 | 0.00018580608 |
| 50 | 0.0004645152 |
| 100 | 0.0009290304 |
| 200 | 0.0018580608 |
| 500 | 0.004645152 |
| 1,000 | 0.009290304 |
5 square feet × 0.000009290304 = 0.00004645152 hectares
Square Feet = Hectare ÷ 0.000009290304
1 square foot = 0.000184 kanal on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition. The kanal has no single national value. It is also 0.000222 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.000242 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.000274 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
5,445 square feet to the standard kanal, twenty marla, one eighth of an acre. Like the marla it moves with the karam belt: 4,500 in Majha, 4,132.8125 in Doaba, 3,645 in parts of Kapurthala.
Where the kanal fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Marla, Kanal and Square Karam above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Kanal = Square Feet ÷ 5,445 (Standard (66-inch karam))
| Square Feet | Kanal (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000184 |
| 2 | 0.000367 |
| 3 | 0.000551 |
| 5 | 0.000918 |
| 10 | 0.001837 |
| 20 | 0.003673 |
| 50 | 0.009183 |
| 100 | 0.018365 |
| 200 | 0.036731 |
| 500 | 0.091827 |
| 1,000 | 0.183655 |
| Kanal definition | Where it applies | 1 kanal in sq ft | Kanal per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 5,445 | 0.000184 | Recurring | sourced |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam) | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 4,500 | 0.000222 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 4,132.8125 | 0.000242 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) | Parts of Kapurthala | 3,645 | 0.000274 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 3 of the 4 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.
| Square Feet | Kanal (4,500 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000222 |
| 2 | 0.000444 |
| 3 | 0.000667 |
| 5 | 0.001111 |
| 10 | 0.002222 |
| 20 | 0.004444 |
| 50 | 0.011111 |
| 100 | 0.022222 |
| 200 | 0.044444 |
| 500 | 0.111111 |
| 1,000 | 0.222222 |
| Square Feet | Kanal (4,132.8125 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000242 |
| 2 | 0.000484 |
| 3 | 0.000726 |
| 5 | 0.00121 |
| 10 | 0.00242 |
| 20 | 0.004839 |
| 50 | 0.012098 |
| 100 | 0.024197 |
| 200 | 0.048393 |
| 500 | 0.120983 |
| 1,000 | 0.241966 |
| Square Feet | Kanal (3,645 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000274 |
| 2 | 0.000549 |
| 3 | 0.000823 |
| 5 | 0.001372 |
| 10 | 0.002743 |
| 20 | 0.005487 |
| 50 | 0.013717 |
| 100 | 0.027435 |
| 200 | 0.05487 |
| 500 | 0.137174 |
| 1,000 | 0.274348 |
5 square feet ÷ 5,445 = 0.000918 kanal
Square Feet = Kanal × 5,445 (Standard (66-inch karam))
Square Feet = Kanal × 4,500 (Majha belt (60-inch karam))
Square Feet = Kanal × 4,132.8125 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam))
Square Feet = Kanal × 3,645 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
1 square foot = 0.000735 katha on the Bihar state standard definition. The katha has no single national value. It is also 0.001389 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 0.000347 (Assam) · 0.000574 (Bihar (Chhapra)) and 2 more per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
The katha is the unit an eastern deed is actually written in, and it has no single value: 1,361.25 square feet in Bihar, 720 in West Bengal and Jharkhand, 2,880 in Assam. The state comes before the arithmetic.
Where the katha fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Bigha, Katha, Biswa and Dhur above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 4/5,445, 0.00073462…, which recurs.
Katha = Square Feet ÷ 1,361.25 (Bihar state standard)
1,361.25 square feet either way, so the Square Feet to Biswa figures apply unchanged. What differs between the two is the record each word belongs to, not the size.
| Katha definition | Where it applies | 1 katha in sq ft | Katha per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bihar state standard (the definition used here) | Patna, Arrah | 1,361.25 | 0.000735 | Recurring | sourced |
| West Bengal / Jharkhand | Rural West Bengal, Ranchi | 720 | 0.001389 | Recurring | sourced |
| Assam | Assam (except Barak Valley) | 2,880 | 0.000347 | Recurring | sourced |
| Bihar (Chhapra) | Saran | 1,742.4 | 0.000574 | Recurring | sourced |
| Bihar (Hajipur) | Vaishali | 1,901.25 | 0.000526 | Recurring | sourced |
| Bihar (Bettiah) | West Champaran | 3,267 | 0.000306 | Recurring | sourced |
To convert against one of the other definitions, multiply by its factor.
5 square feet ÷ 1,361.25 = 0.003673 katha
Square Feet = Katha × 1,361.25 (Bihar state standard)
Square Feet = Katha × 720 (West Bengal / Jharkhand)
Square Feet = Katha × 2,880 (Assam)
Square Feet = Katha × 1,742.4 (Bihar (Chhapra))
Square Feet = Katha × 1,901.25 (Bihar (Hajipur))
Square Feet = Katha × 3,267 (Bihar (Bettiah))
1 square foot = 0.006944 lessa, recurring. A lessa is the 12-foot mauzadari jar squared (Assam Land Records Manual r.117); 20 to a katha, 100 to a bigha.
144 square feet to the lessa, twelve feet square. Four pawa make a lessa in Assam usage, and twenty lessa a katha.
Where the lessa fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Nali, Lessa, Pura, Killa and Murabba above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Lessa = Square Feet ÷ 144
| Square Feet | Lessa |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.006944 |
| 2 | 0.013889 |
| 3 | 0.020833 |
| 5 | 0.034722 |
| 10 | 0.069444 |
| 20 | 0.138889 |
| 50 | 0.347222 |
| 100 | 0.694444 |
| 200 | 1.388889 |
| 500 | 3.472222 |
| 1,000 | 6.944444 |
5 square feet ÷ 144 = 0.034722 lessa
Square Feet = Lessa × 144
1 square foot = 0.003673 marla on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition. The marla has no single national value. It is also 0.004444 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.004839 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.005487 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) and 1 more per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
272.25 square feet to the standard marla, but only on the 66-inch karam. In the Majha belt the marla is 225 square feet, in Doaba 206.640625, in parts of Kapurthala 182.25. A Punjab plot quoted in marla needs the belt before it needs arithmetic.
Where the marla fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Marla, Kanal and Square Karam above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 4/1,089, 0.00367309…, which recurs.
Marla = Square Feet ÷ 272.25 (Standard (66-inch karam))
| Square Feet | Marla (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.003673 |
| 2 | 0.007346 |
| 3 | 0.011019 |
| 5 | 0.018365 |
| 10 | 0.036731 |
| 20 | 0.073462 |
| 50 | 0.183655 |
| 100 | 0.367309 |
| 200 | 0.734619 |
| 500 | 1.836547 |
| 1,000 | 3.673095 |
| Marla definition | Where it applies | 1 marla in sq ft | Marla per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 272.25 | 0.003673 | Recurring | sourced |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam) | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 225 | 0.004444 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 206.640625 | 0.004839 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) | Parts of Kapurthala | 182.25 | 0.005487 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| HSVP urban estate | Haryana urban estates | 225 | 0.004444 | Recurring | sourced |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 3 of the 5 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.
5 square feet ÷ 272.25 = 0.018365 marla
Square Feet = Marla × 272.25 (Standard (66-inch karam))
Square Feet = Marla × 225 (Majha belt (60-inch karam))
Square Feet = Marla × 206.640625 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam))
Square Feet = Marla × 182.25 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
Square Feet = Marla × 225 (HSVP urban estate)
1 square foot = 0.000000918 murabba on the Punjab canal colony definition. The murabba has no single national value. It is also 0.00000147 (Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal)) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
1,089,000 square feet to the murabba, twenty-five acres. The murabba is a survey block rather than a trading unit, and almost never quoted in square feet outside an arithmetic check like this one.
Where the murabba fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Nali, Lessa, Pura, Killa and Murabba above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Murabba = Square Feet ÷ 1,089,000 (Punjab canal colony)
| Square Feet | Murabba (Punjab canal colony) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000000918 |
| 2 | 0.00000184 |
| 3 | 0.00000275 |
| 5 | 0.00000459 |
| 10 | 0.00000918 |
| 20 | 0.0000184 |
| 50 | 0.0000459 |
| 100 | 0.0000918 |
| 200 | 0.000184 |
| 500 | 0.000459 |
| 1,000 | 0.000918 |
| Murabba definition | Where it applies | 1 murabba in sq ft | Murabba per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punjab canal colony (the definition used here) | Punjab, Haryana canal colonies | 1,089,000 | 0.000000918 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal) | Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Bikaner, Jaisalmer | 680,625 | 0.00000147 | Recurring | 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.
| Square Feet | Murabba (680,625 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.00000147 |
| 2 | 0.00000294 |
| 3 | 0.00000441 |
| 5 | 0.00000735 |
| 10 | 0.0000147 |
| 20 | 0.0000294 |
| 50 | 0.0000735 |
| 100 | 0.000147 |
| 200 | 0.000294 |
| 500 | 0.000735 |
| 1,000 | 0.001469 |
5 square feet ÷ 1,089,000 = 0.00000459 murabba
Square Feet = Murabba × 1,089,000 (Punjab canal colony)
Square Feet = Murabba × 680,625 (Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal))
1 square foot = 0.000463 nali, recurring. A nali is 240 sq yd; 16 mutthi of 135 sq ft. No instrument located states the figure.
2,160 square feet to the nali, 240 square yards. Sixteen mutthi make a nali; the mutthi is 135 sq ft and is still quoted for kitchen gardens.
Where the nali fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Nali, Lessa, Pura, Killa and Murabba above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Nali = Square Feet ÷ 2,160
| Square Feet | Nali |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.000463 |
| 2 | 0.000926 |
| 3 | 0.001389 |
| 5 | 0.002315 |
| 10 | 0.00463 |
| 20 | 0.009259 |
| 50 | 0.023148 |
| 100 | 0.046296 |
| 200 | 0.092593 |
| 500 | 0.231481 |
| 1,000 | 0.462963 |
5 square feet ÷ 2,160 = 0.002315 nali
Square Feet = Nali × 2,160
1 square foot = 0.0000174 pura, recurring. 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.
57,600 square feet on the Assam reading, four bigha of 14,400. The attestation is weak: this series located the value in circulation but no Assam instrument defining it.
Where the pura fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Nali, Lessa, Pura, Killa and Murabba above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Pura = Square Feet ÷ 57,600
| Square Feet | Pura |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0000174 |
| 2 | 0.0000347 |
| 3 | 0.0000521 |
| 5 | 0.0000868 |
| 10 | 0.000174 |
| 20 | 0.000347 |
| 50 | 0.000868 |
| 100 | 0.001736 |
| 200 | 0.003472 |
| 500 | 0.008681 |
| 1,000 | 0.017361 |
5 square feet ÷ 57,600 = 0.0000868 pura
Square Feet = Pura × 57,600
1 square foot = 929.0304 square centimetres, exact. A square centimetre is one ten-thousandth of a square metre.
929.0304 square centimetres to the square foot, exact, because the international foot is exactly 0.3048 metres. The figure terminates in this direction and recurs in the other.
Where the square centimetre fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Square Inch and Square Centimeter above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 580,644/625, or 929.0304 exactly.
Square Centimeter = Square Feet × 929.0304
| Square Feet | Square Centimeter |
|---|---|
| 1 | 929.0304 |
| 2 | 1,858.0608 |
| 3 | 2,787.0912 |
| 5 | 4,645.152 |
| 10 | 9,290.304 |
| 20 | 18,580.608 |
| 50 | 46,451.52 |
| 100 | 92,903.04 |
| 200 | 185,806.08 |
| 500 | 464,515.2 |
| 1,000 | 929,030.4 |
5 square feet × 929.0304 = 4,645.152 square centimetres
Square Feet = Square Centimeter ÷ 929.0304
1 square foot = 144 square inches, exact. A square inch is one 144th of a square foot.
144 square inches to the square foot. The square inch matters in Indian land work almost only through the karam, which is defined in inches (66, 60, 57.5 or 54), and squared to give the sarsahi.
Where the square inch fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Square Inch and Square Centimeter above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Square Inch = Square Feet × 144
| Square Feet | Square Inch |
|---|---|
| 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 |
5 square feet × 144 = 720 square inches
Square Feet = Square Inch ÷ 144
1 square foot = 0.033058 square karam on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition. The square karam has no single national value. It is also 0.04 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 0.043554 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 0.049383 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) per square foot. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
30.25 square feet on the standard 66-inch karam. The karam is a pace, and the manual that governs it says so, which is why the sarsahi is 25 square feet in Majha and about 20.25 in parts of Kapurthala.
Where the square karam fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Marla, Kanal and Square Karam above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 4/121, 0.03305785…, which recurs.
Square Karam = Square Feet ÷ 30.25 (Standard (66-inch karam))
| Square Feet | Square Karam (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.033058 |
| 2 | 0.066116 |
| 3 | 0.099174 |
| 5 | 0.165289 |
| 10 | 0.330579 |
| 20 | 0.661157 |
| 50 | 1.652893 |
| 100 | 3.305785 |
| 200 | 6.61157 |
| 500 | 16.528926 |
| 1,000 | 33.057851 |
| Square Karam definition | Where it applies | 1 square karam in sq ft | Square Karam per square foot | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 30.25 | 0.033058 | Recurring | sourced |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam) | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 25 | 0.04 | Exact | reported, not sourced |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 22.960069 | 0.043554 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) | Parts of Kapurthala | 20.25 | 0.049383 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 3 of the 4 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.
| Square Feet | Square Karam (25 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.04 |
| 2 | 0.08 |
| 3 | 0.12 |
| 5 | 0.2 |
| 10 | 0.4 |
| 20 | 0.8 |
| 50 | 2 |
| 100 | 4 |
| 200 | 8 |
| 500 | 20 |
| 1,000 | 40 |
| Square Feet | Square Karam (22.960069 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.043554 |
| 2 | 0.087108 |
| 3 | 0.130662 |
| 5 | 0.217769 |
| 10 | 0.435539 |
| 20 | 0.871078 |
| 50 | 2.177694 |
| 100 | 4.355388 |
| 200 | 8.710775 |
| 500 | 21.776938 |
| 1,000 | 43.553875 |
| Square Feet | Square Karam (20.25 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.049383 |
| 2 | 0.098765 |
| 3 | 0.148148 |
| 5 | 0.246914 |
| 10 | 0.493827 |
| 20 | 0.987654 |
| 50 | 2.469136 |
| 100 | 4.938272 |
| 200 | 9.876543 |
| 500 | 24.691358 |
| 1,000 | 49.382716 |
5 square feet ÷ 30.25 = 0.165289 square karam
Square Feet = Square Karam × 30.25 (Standard (66-inch karam))
Square Feet = Square Karam × 25 (Majha belt (60-inch karam))
Square Feet = Square Karam × 13,225/576 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam))
Square Feet = Square Karam × 20.25 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam))
1 square foot = 0.00000009290304 square kilometres, exact. A square kilometre is 1,000,000 m².
A square kilometre is 10,763,910.4167… square feet, a figure that recurs. The exact direction is the other one: a square foot is 0.00000009290304 square kilometres, exactly.
Where the square kilometre fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Hectare, Are, Square Kilometer and Square Mile above; what follows is the arithmetic.
The ratio is the fraction 145,161/1,562,500,000,000, or 0.00000009290304 exactly.
Square Kilometer = Square Feet × 0.00000009290304
| Square Feet | Square Kilometer |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.00000009290304 |
| 2 | 0.00000018580608 |
| 3 | 0.00000027870912 |
| 5 | 0.0000004645152 |
| 10 | 0.0000009290304 |
| 20 | 0.0000018580608 |
| 50 | 0.000004645152 |
| 100 | 0.000009290304 |
| 200 | 0.000018580608 |
| 500 | 0.00004645152 |
| 1,000 | 0.00009290304 |
5 square feet × 0.00000009290304 = 0.0000004645152 square kilometres
Square Feet = Square Kilometer ÷ 0.00000009290304
1 square foot = 0.0000000359 square miles, recurring. A square mile is standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976, Schedule (see s.79): "1 square mile = 2 589 988.110 336 square metres"; 640 acres exactly.
A square mile is 27,878,400 square feet, 640 acres, exactly. Both the acre and the square mile come from the same survey arithmetic, which is why the relationship between them is a whole number and the relationship to metric units is not.
Where the square mile fits into the square foot's own record is set out in Square Feet to Hectare, Are, Square Kilometer and Square Mile above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Square Mile = Square Feet ÷ 27,878,400
| Square Feet | Square Mile |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0000000359 |
| 2 | 0.0000000717 |
| 3 | 0.000000108 |
| 5 | 0.000000179 |
| 10 | 0.000000359 |
| 20 | 0.000000717 |
| 50 | 0.00000179 |
| 100 | 0.00000359 |
| 200 | 0.00000717 |
| 500 | 0.0000179 |
| 1,000 | 0.0000359 |
5 square feet ÷ 27,878,400 = 0.000000179 square miles
Square Feet = Square Mile × 27,878,400
Six of the thirty-two units are two names for one area with another, so their figures are identical to the last digit.
1 square foot = 0.002296 decimal. A decimal and a cent are the same area, 435.6 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Decimal = Square Feet ÷ 435.6 · reverse Square Feet = Decimal × 435.6
1 square foot = 0.002296 dismil. A dismil and a cent are the same area, 435.6 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Dismil = Square Feet ÷ 435.6 · reverse Square Feet = Dismil × 435.6
1 square foot = 0.111111 gajam. A gajam and a gaj are the same area, 9 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Gajam = Square Feet ÷ 9 · reverse Square Feet = Gajam × 9
1 square foot = 0.0000230 killa. A killa and an acre are the same area, 43,560 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Killa = Square Feet ÷ 43,560 · reverse Square Feet = Killa × 43,560
1 square foot = 0.003673 perches. A perch and a marla are the same area, 272.25 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Perch = Square Feet ÷ 272.25 · reverse Square Feet = Perch × 272.25
1 square foot = 0.111111 square yards. A square yard and a gaj are the same area, 9 square feet, so any Square Feet figure converts to the same number of either. Square Yard = Square Feet ÷ 9 · reverse Square Feet = Square Yard × 9
The tables above are arithmetic, and for a square foot the arithmetic is the easy half. What decides whether the figure you started with is the right one to convert at all is Which Square Feet Are You Buying?.
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