Conversion is a permission about use. It says nothing about who owns the land, and it does not by itself let you build. Both halves of that sentence get people into trouble, in opposite directions.
The two routes under the amended provision
The 2023 amendment changed both the Master Plan route and the decision period for applications outside that route.
Under Section 95(2)(i), where agricultural land falls within a Local Planning Area with a duly published Master Plan and the proposed use conforms to it, Deputy Commissioner permission is not required. The prescribed fee, self-declaration and necessary permissions from the concerned planning authorities still matter. This exception is not permission to disregard layout or building requirements.
Section 95(2)(ii) addresses land outside a Local Planning Area, or within one without a duly published Master Plan. It provides for an affidavit-based application and a thirty-day decision period from receipt. Failure to inform the applicant within that period attracts the specified deemed-permission and certification process, subject to payment of the conversion fee. Check that the application satisfies the statutory route before relying on silence.
When it is refused, and on what conditions
Section 95(3) allows refusal where the diversion is likely to defeat the provisions of any law in force, or is likely to cause a public nuisance, or is not in the interests of the general public, or where the occupant is unable or unwilling to comply with conditions. Section 95(4) allows conditions to secure health, safety and convenience, and in the case of building sites, to secure that the dimensions, arrangement and accessibility of the sites are adequate and do not contravene town planning law or building law. So a conversion order can be granted subject to conditions that are themselves worth reading before you buy.
Skipping it is not a quiet risk
- Section 96(1) allows summary eviction of the occupant and of the person responsible for the diversion
- Any building erected on the diverted land is liable to forfeiture or summary removal if it is not removed after written notice
- Section 96(2) allows a notice requiring the land to be put back to its original use, with a continuing penalty while the contravention lasts
- Section 96(3) lets the Deputy Commissioner do the work himself and recover the cost as arrears of land revenue
- Section 95(2AAA) says diversions that are not regularised are liable to be demolished or brought back to their earlier use, with the expenses collected as arrears of land revenue
- Section 144(6) of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act, 2020 charges double property tax on a building on revenue land, and its proviso says paying it confers no title and no right to regularise
There was a regularisation route in Section 95(2A) for residential diversions made before 31 December 2008, but it was tied to a fixed application window measured from the commencement of the 2011 amendment, and that window has long closed. Anyone told today that an old unauthorised diversion can still be regularised under that sub-section should ask which provision is being relied on.
Conversion is not permission to build
This is the half people forget on the way up. A conversion order permits a change of use. It does not sanction a layout, and Section 17 of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961 does that separately, with the final layout plan gating every building licence in the layout. Nor does it sanction a building plan, which comes from the corporation under Sections 239 and 240 of the 2020 Act or from the grama panchayat under Section 64 of the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act, 1993. A property can hold a perfectly valid conversion order and still be unbuildable. What conversion does do is remove the objection that keeps most of these properties out of the A register, which is why it is the first item in our guide to B khata to A khata conversion. The related question of what a revenue site actually is, is dealt with in the revenue site answer.