Before the deed / due diligence
What the checks before you buy cost
Checking a piece of land before you buy it costs about Rs. 1,081 in official fees. This page shows what each of those four checks is, what it tells you, and exactly how the fee is built up.
The four checks are a search of the registration books going back four years at Rs. 55, a certificate listing any registered claims on the property at Rs. 100, a certified copy of the one page summary of an earlier sale at Rs. 323, and a certified copy of a twenty page deed at Rs. 603. Every other check a careful buyer makes has no published price at all, and those are named further down rather than guessed at.
Four published steps, Rs. 1,0816 steps with no published feeSource undated citizen charterLast verified: 4 August 2026
01The four steps with a printed number
Before you buy, you check the land. You look at who owns it, whether anyone else has a claim on it, and what the government thinks it is worth. Four of those checks have an official price. Everything else in the procedure has none.
The amounts are small next to the duty, and each one is built from several fixed items rather than a single fee, which is why every one is broken down below.
The four due diligence steps that carry a printed amount, with the arithmetic totalled.
| Step | Record | Total Rs. | Statutory basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record search of Book 1 and Book 2, four years | GJ-DD-05 | 55 | The Registration Act, 1908 (Part XII, of searches and copies) |
| Encumbrance Certificate at the Sub-Registrar office | GJ-DD-06 | 100 | The Registration Act, 1908 |
| Certified copy of Index-2, one copy, offline | GJ-DD-08 | 323 | The Registration Act, 1908, section 55 (indexes) read with the certified-copy provisions |
| Certified copy of a registered deed, 20 pages at 25.4 cm x 15.2 cm | GJ-DD-09 | 603 | The Registration Act, 1908 |
| Total of the four published steps | 1,081 |
02The arithmetic, step by step
Record search of Book 1 and Book 2, four years
| Line item | Input | Rate | Amount Rs. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Court fee ticket on Form No. 3 | printed amount | 5 | |
| 02 | Search fee, first year | printed amount | 20 | |
| 03 | Search fee, second year | printed amount | 10 | |
| 04 | Search fee, third year | printed amount | 10 | |
| 05 | Search fee, fourth year | printed amount | 10 | |
| Total for this step | = | 55 | ||
The source works the same example: searching one survey number for 2007 to 2010 comes to 20 + 10 + 10 + 10, that is Rs. 50 of search fee. The Rs. 5 court fee ticket on Form No. 3 is charged on top.
Encumbrance Certificate at the Sub-Registrar office
| Line item | Input | Rate | Amount Rs. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Encumbrance Certificate fee, offline route | printed amount | 100 | |
| Total for this step | = | 100 | ||
The online route has no published figure. The official help file says only that the required fee must be paid online.
Certified copy of Index-2, one copy, offline
| Line item | Input | Rate | Amount Rs. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Court fee ticket on Form No. 3 | printed amount | 3 | |
| 02 | Copy fee | printed amount | 20 | |
| 03 | Court fee ticket submitted with the form | printed amount | 300 | |
| Total for this step | = | 323 | ||
The online route computes the application fee, the Index-2 fee and the copy fee from the number of copies requested and prints no amount.
Certified copy of a registered deed, 20 pages at 25.4 cm x 15.2 cm
| Line item | Input | Rate | Amount Rs. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Court fee ticket on Form No. 3 | printed amount | 3 | |
| 02 | Copy fee, 20 pages at Rs. 15 per page | 20 x 15 | 300 | |
| 03 | Court fee ticket per copy | printed amount | 300 | |
| Total for this step | = | 603 | ||
The per-page copy fee moves with the page size: Rs. 10 at 18.5 cm x 11.4 cm, Rs. 15 at 25.4 cm x 15.2 cm, Rs. 20 at 30.5 cm x 19.0 cm and at 34.3 cm x 21.6 cm.
03The steps with no published number
A buyer doing full due diligence on a Dholera survey number touches several more services than the four above. None of them prints an amount.
Due diligence steps with no published amount anywhere in the sources examined.
| Step | Record | Fee | Where it is done |
|---|---|---|---|
| View Village Form 7 (VF-7 / 7-12) survey number details online | GJ-DD-01 | no official fee published | AnyROR @ Anywhere (anyror.gujarat.gov.in), Revenue Department, Government of Gujarat; content owned by Revenue Department, developed by NIC Gujarat |
| View Village Form 8-A (VF-8A) khata details online | GJ-DD-02 | no official fee published | AnyROR @ Anywhere (anyror.gujarat.gov.in), Revenue Department, Government of Gujarat |
| View VF-6 mutation entries and the 135-D mutation notice online | GJ-DD-03 | no official fee published | AnyROR @ Anywhere (anyror.gujarat.gov.in), Revenue Department, Government of Gujarat |
| Obtain a digitally signed Village Form (digitally signed RoR / 7-12 and 8-A) | GJ-DD-04 | no official fee published | iORA - Integrated Online Revenue Applications (iora.gujarat.gov.in), Revenue Department, Government of Gujarat; linked from AnyROR |
| Obtain a certified Encumbrance Certificate online | GJ-DD-07 | no official fee published | Garvi 2.0 / iORA (garvi.gujarat.gov.in application service, routed to iora.gujarat.gov.in) |
| Check the Jantri (Annual Statement of Rates) and the approximate market value before agreeing a price | GJ-DD-10 | no official fee published | Garvi portal, Inspector General of Registration and Superintendent of Stamps, Government of Gujarat. If the jantri rate for a revenue survey number is not shown, the source directs the citizen to the office of the Deputy Collector, Stamp Duty Valuation Organisation in his district. |
The Revenue Department IORA portal returned HTTP 503 with a one hour retry header on every attempt on 4 August 2026, so the in-portal fee screen for the digitally signed record of rights could not be read. It is recorded as not published rather than guessed at.
04How this sits against the duty
The four published pre-registration steps come to Rs. 1,081 in total. The duty and fee on one acre at the cheapest principal band in the region come to Rs. 8,835. The pre-registration charges are therefore a rounding error against the transfer charge, which is the useful thing to know about them.
The order matters more than the amount. A record search and an encumbrance certificate are what tell a buyer whether the title supports a transfer at all, and they cost less than a day of anybody's time.
The full charge register holds all thirty five steps in sequence.
The words on this page, in plain English
- Encumbrance Certificate
- A statement from the registration office listing the registered charges on a property, so a buyer can see whether it is mortgaged or otherwise burdened.
- Index-2, Anukramanika-2
- The one page summary the registration office creates for every registered deed. It names the parties, identifies the property and states the price, which makes it the only public record of what a plot actually sold for.
- Court fee ticket
- A small adhesive stamp bought and stuck on an application form. It is a fee for making the application, not a tax on the property.
- Sub-Registrar
- The local government office where the deed is presented, the duty is checked and the document is entered in the public record.
- Record of Rights, the village forms
- The village land register. Form 7/12 shows the survey number and who holds it, Form 8A shows an owner's whole holding, and Form 6 records every change made to them.