My Father Died and the Khata Is Still in His Name: Khata Transfer After Death in Bengaluru

A khata transfer after death is done by the heirs on an application to the city corporation, with the death certificate, a family tree certificate from the Nadakacheri, the will if there is one, and the signed consent of every other heir. Section 149(2) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 gives the person to whom the title passes as heir one year from the death to give notice of the transfer. A succession certificate is not needed for a flat or a site, because Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 confines that certificate to debts and securities.

Part of the property and real estate practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.

This page is for the son or daughter in Bengaluru whose father has died with the flat or site still in his name, sometimes jointly with the mother, with or without a will. Bank accounts and shares have their own paper, and a fight over the will itself belongs in a civil court. From abroad, our NRI succession and inheritance practice runs these files on a power of attorney.

The khata is still in my late father's name: what do I file?

You file a khata transfer application in the names of all the heirs, and inside the Bengaluru City Corporations that means an e-khata application on the e-Aasthi portal, with this set:

• Death certificate of the owner (the digital e-Janma number, or a certified physical copy).
• Family tree certificate (Vamsha Vruksha Pramana Patra) from the Deputy Tahsildar through the Nadakacheri, naming every surviving member.
• The will, if any. Probate is no longer a precondition, but the office wants the intestate heirs' affidavits beside it.
• Joint affidavit of all the heirs saying in whose names the khata is to stand, plus a no objection affidavit from any heir content to stay off the record.
• A registered release deed, if any heir is actually giving up a share. An affidavit does not do that job.
• The existing khata certificate and extract, or the draft e-khata.
• The father's sale deed and the mother deeds behind it.
• Encumbrance certificate (Form 15) from Kaveri, up to date.
• The latest property tax paid receipt, ideally for the current year.
• Aadhaar of every heir, for the portal's e-KYC, and a photograph of the applicant.
• Indemnity bond where the office asks, as the BDA route does.
• Surviving family member certificate only where the deceased was a government employee. For everyone else the family tree certificate is the document.

Section 149(2) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 reads that in the event of the death of the khatadar, the person to whom the title of the deceased is transferred as heir or otherwise shall give notice of the transfer to the Commissioner within one year from the death. Section 149(3) then has the transferee's name entered in the property tax register when the transfer comes to the Commissioner's knowledge "through such notice or otherwise", so a late notice is not fatal, but you will be explaining the delay.

Deadline warning. Section 149(2) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 gives the heir one year from the death to notify the corporation, and Section 149(4) keeps whoever fails to give notice liable for the property tax until the transfer is recorded.

Which office handles the khata transfer for my father's property?

It depends on which register the property sits in. Bengaluru has changed hands: the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 (Karnataka Act 36 of 2025) came into force on 15 May 2025, repealed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Act, 2020 by Section 361, and reconstituted the BBMP area into City Corporations under a Greater Bengaluru Authority.

Do I need a succession certificate or a legal heir certificate for the flat?

For a flat or a site you need the family tree certificate from the Nadakacheri, not a succession certificate, and neither is proof of title. The succession certificate is a District Judge's instrument for money. Section 370(1) of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 grants it "with respect to any debt or security", Section 370(2) defines security as government paper, bonds, debentures and shares, and Section 372(1)(f) makes the petition list "the debts and securities in respect of which the certificate is applied for". A flat is not a debt owed to your father, and a court cannot put it in the certificate. If your father also left a bank account or shares, that is where the certificate belongs, and our guide on succession certificate, legal heir certificate or probate matches each paper to each asset.

In Karnataka the document the khata office wants goes by two names. What people search for as a legal heir certificate is, in the revenue system, the family tree certificate, issued by the Deputy Tahsildar through the Nadakacheri under the Revenue Department's guidelines of 17 July 2026. The separate surviving family member certificate is for a deceased government employee's family, as the BDA e-khata page itself says.

Common mistake. Applying to the District Court for a succession certificate covering the flat. Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 confines the certificate to debts and securities, so the petition wastes the court fee and the months, and the khata office still asks for the family tree certificate.

How do I get the family tree certificate, and how long does it take?

You apply through the Nadakacheri (Atalji Janasnehi Kendra), a Grama One, Karnataka One or Bapuji Seva Kendra counter, or the online citizen portal, and the Revenue Department's circular of 17 July 2026 fixes the Sakala limit at 14 working days. The circular names khata change by inheritance as the first use of the certificate. Its procedure:

1. Swear an affidavit on Rs 100 stamp paper in the model format annexed to the circular, notarised, listing every family member with name, relationship, age and marital status, with the applicant's Aadhaar number and two witnesses.
2. Complete Aadhaar e-KYC by OTP or biometric. The circular makes it mandatory.
3. Upload one identity document for every living member (Aadhaar, voter card, passport, PAN or the like) and the applicant's photograph.
4. For each deceased member, give the digital death certificate number, failing which a certified physical certificate, failing which listed identity documents plus a mahazar by the Village Administrative Officer recorded on video.
5. The Village Administrative Officer verifies on a field visit and reports to the Revenue Inspector, and the Deputy Tahsildar decides. The certificate issues digitally by SMS or email, and a rejection comes with reasons.
6. An appeal lies to the Assistant Commissioner of the sub-division, 35 days under Sakala. A certificate obtained on false information can be cancelled, and that appeal is decided within 90 days after an enquiry.

Three rules in the circular decide hard cases. An adopted child is entered as the child of the adoptive parents under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956. A disputed member, the circular's own example being a claim of two wives, is entered only on a civil court decree, because the Revenue Department has no jurisdiction to decide that. And the certificate rests on the applicant's affidavit and is valid until the next birth or death in the family or for one year, whichever is earlier. A false affidavit is an offence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, so list the half-sibling, the predeceased brother's children and the estranged sister.

The four facts that decide most of these files sit below.

My mother was joint owner with my father: does the whole flat become hers?

No. Co-owners hold as tenants in common, so your father's share passes to his heirs, and your mother takes it only as one of those heirs, not by survivorship. Section 45 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 says that where property is bought in two names each takes the share that matches what each paid, and where nothing shows who paid what they are presumed equally interested. Section 19 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 says that heirs who succeed together take as tenants-in-common and not as joint tenants. So where the deed names both parents, your father owned half, and that half devolves under Section 8 on his Class I heirs: his widow, each son, each daughter, and his mother if alive, one share each under Section 10.

Take a widow and two children, no surviving grandmother. The mother keeps her half. The father's half splits three ways. She ends with two thirds and each child one sixth, and the khata should say exactly that, all three names as khatadars. If the children want the flat in her sole name they give up their sixths by a registered release deed, at the fixed family stamp duty dealt with below. An affidavit that the flat belongs to her transfers nothing.

If your mother later dies without a will, what she inherited from your father goes under Section 15(1) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 to her children first, and under Section 15(2)(b), if she leaves none, to her husband's heirs rather than her own side, on which our guide on succession after the death of a spouse goes further.

There is a will: do I need probate before the khata transfer?

No. Probate is no longer a precondition to relying on a will anywhere in India, because Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 was omitted by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025, and our post on why probate is no longer mandatory explains what that change did and did not do. The khata office takes the will with the death certificate. A registered will travels more easily, but registration was never a condition of validity.

Section 149(5) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 lets the Commissioner reopen any transfer recorded in the register "wrongly or by fraud or suppression of facts or by furnishing false, incorrect or incomplete material" within five years of the entry, after hearing the person affected, and its third proviso lifts the five-year limit where the entry was made by fraud or misrepresentation. So the careful officer asks for affidavits from the intestate heirs that they know of the will and do not dispute it.

Where a sibling does dispute the will, stop. The Supreme Court in Jitendra Singh v State of Madhya Pradesh, decided on 6 September 2021, held that where a mutation entry is sought on a will and the title is disputed, the party claiming under the will "has to approach the appropriate civil court" and have the right crystallised before any entry is made. That is when probate, though optional, becomes the practical instrument, because a grant binds everyone.

There is no will: who are the heirs and who has to sign?

For a Hindu father who dies intestate, Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 sends his property first to the Class I heirs in the Schedule, and Section 9 says they take simultaneously and to the exclusion of everyone else. Class I is the son, the daughter, the widow, the mother, then the children and widow of a predeceased son and the children of a predeceased daughter. Every one of them signs the joint affidavit, because every one of them owns a share from the moment of death, and the father's own father, in Class II, takes nothing while any of them lives.

The shares come from Section 10: the widow one share, each surviving son and daughter and the mother of the deceased one share each, and the branch of each predeceased child one share between them. A married daughter is a Class I heir on the same footing as a son, and where the property was ancestral coparcenary property, Section 6 as amended in 2005 gives her the same coparcenary share, on which our guide on daughter coparcenary rights goes further. If the property stood in your mother's sole name and she has died, Section 15(1) puts her sons, daughters and husband first, together.

Two signatures need care. A minor heir signs through the natural guardian, and Section 8(2) of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956 bars the guardian from transferring any part of the minor's immovable property by sale, gift, exchange or otherwise without the previous permission of the court, so record the minor as a khatadar and leave the share alone. A family governed by Muslim personal law, or by the Indian Succession Act as Christians and Parsis are, uses the same Nadakacheri procedure, but the shares follow that law and not Section 10.

One heir is abroad or refuses to sign: what then?

An heir abroad can sign, and an heir who refuses cannot be signed around. The affidavits can be sworn before the Indian consulate or a local notary and apostilled, and a release deed can be executed and registered through an attorney under a power of attorney authenticated in the manner the Registration Act, 1908 requires for a principal outside India. Our Ask Me answer on getting a khata done in Bengaluru without travelling sets out that mechanism.

For the heir who refuses, the corporation will not put the khata in the other heirs' sole names, and after Section 149(5) it should not. Three outcomes are realistic. First, the khata is recorded in the names of all the heirs, the reluctant one included, since Section 149(2) speaks of the person to whom title passes "as heir or otherwise" and nothing requires unanimity to record what the law has done. Second, the family partitions by registered deed, or one heir sues, which our guide on property partition suits walks through. Third, a co-heir sells the undivided share, and Section 22 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 gives the other Class I heirs a preferential right to buy it at a price the court fixes if they cannot agree. One heir cannot sell the whole flat, as our post on whether one legal heir can sell jointly inherited property explains.

Do we need a release deed, and what does it cost?

Only if an heir is giving up a share to another heir. Consent to record the khata in everyone's names needs no deed. But a release of a share in a flat extinguishes a right in immovable property worth more than one hundred rupees, and Section 17(1)(b) of the Registration Act, 1908 makes its registration compulsory. An unregistered release, a no objection letter or an affidavit moves nothing. The sibling who signed still owns the share and still joins any sale.

The stamp duty is fixed and small within the family. Article 45(b) of the Schedule to the Karnataka Stamp Act, 1957, as substituted from 1 April 2016, charges Rs 5,000 where the property is within the limits of the Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, the former Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike or a City Corporation, Rs 3,000 within a City or Town Municipal Council or Town Panchayat, and Rs 1,000 elsewhere. The Explanation defines family as husband, wife, son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, the wife and children of a predeceased brother, the husband and children of a predeceased sister, the wife of a predeceased son, and the children of a predeceased son or daughter. A release to anyone outside that list is charged under Article 45(a) as a conveyance on market value. The registration fee is separate. Our guide on gift deed, will or settlement deed compares the alternatives.

Does inheritance change an A khata, a B khata or the e-khata?

No. Inheritance changes the name in the register, not the register the property sits in. Section 148(6) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 requires the corporation to give every taxpayer an acknowledgement or khata that "shall be distinct for lawful and unlawful buildings or vacant land", and that is the A and B distinction. A B entry in your father's name becomes a B entry in the heirs' names, and regularisation is a separate application, on which our post on B khata to A khata conversion is current. Because registration inside corporation limits is tied to the e-khata, the heirs need the final e-khata, not the draft, before any of them can sell, and our guide to e-khata transfer in Bangalore covers the buyer's side.

How do I apply on the e-Aasthi portal, step by step?

The portal's screens change and the corporation's instructions govern on the day, but the order of the file does not, and this order avoids the two commonest rejections, a stale tax receipt and a family tree that does not match the affidavit:

1. Get the death certificate, then the family tree certificate from the Nadakacheri.
2. Pay the current year's property tax against the existing property identification number. Arrears stall the file.
3. Pull an up-to-date encumbrance certificate (Form 15) from Kaveri and check that the father's deed appears with the right extent.
4. Have every heir sign the joint affidavit. If a share is being given up, register the release deed now and pull a fresh encumbrance certificate afterwards.
5. Log in to the e-Aasthi portal with the property identification number, choose the khata transfer service, enter every heir as an applicant, and upload the set. The portal runs Aadhaar e-KYC and cross-checks the deed against Kaveri. The GBA e-khata helpline on the portal is 9480683695.
6. The zone's revenue officer verifies, may order a site inspection, and endorses or returns the file with reasons. Track the application number on the portal.
7. Download the final e-khata, not the draft, and read it: every heir's name, the extent, the property identification number, and the A or B register.
8. Keep the acknowledgement and the uploaded set for five years, the reopening window under Section 149(5).

What does it cost and how long does it take?

The only figures fixed by law here are the stamp duty on a family release deed and the Sakala limits on the family tree certificate. The rest is indicative.

The office has refused, or is sitting on the file: what can I do?

Appeal first, then the High Court. Section 149(6) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 sends appeals against any order of the authorised officer on property tax and connected records to the authority the rules prescribe, and its proviso lets the Commissioner review a subordinate officer's order where a transfer was recorded wrongly. Section 174 bars a civil suit against the corporation unless the plaintiff has first presented all the appeals the law allowed, and Section 172 takes objections to assessment, levy and recovery out of the civil court altogether. A refusal goes to the appellate authority, not to a plaint.

Where the office neither decides nor refuses, the remedy is a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution in the High Court of Karnataka for a direction to decide within a fixed time, after a written representation to the Joint Commissioner (Revenue). Where the refusal is that another heir has objected, no appeal within the Act cures it. Jitendra Singh puts a disputed title in the civil court, and the khata follows the decree, which is where the file comes to a property litigation practice.

Does the khata in my name give me title to the flat?

No. A khata is a tax record, and the Supreme Court in Jitendra Singh v State of Madhya Pradesh restated that a mutation entry "does not confer any right, title or interest in favour of the person and the mutation entry in the revenue record is only for the fiscal purpose", citing Balwant Singh v Daulat Singh, (1997) 7 SCC 137, for the rule that mutation neither creates nor extinguishes title. The Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 says the same in its own words. Section 2(34) defines a khata as "a record of an immovable property maintained in the property tax register", and Section 2(35) defines the khatadar as the person recorded as legally responsible to pay the tax, whose entry "shall be presumed to be true until the contrary is proved or a new entry is lawfully substituted". A rebuttable presumption for tax purposes is all you get.

Your title came from the death itself. At that moment your father's share vested in his heirs under Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, or in the legatees under his will, and the family tree certificate, the will or a decree are the evidence of who those people are. A buyer, a bank and the sub-registrar will want all of it, from the chain of deeds to the final e-khata in the sellers' names. A khata alone, in one sibling's name, is the document a careful buyer distrusts.

Key takeaway. The khata records who pays the tax. Section 2(35) of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 gives the entry a presumption that can be rebutted, and the Supreme Court holds that mutation neither creates nor extinguishes title. Your ownership comes from the succession, and the khata must be made to match it, never the other way round.

What about property tax arrears on my father's property?

They follow the flat and stall the transfer. Section 155 of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024 makes property tax a first charge on the building and land and on the movables in it. Section 159 sets the machinery: a notice of demand, thirty days to pay or appeal, then default, penalty and interest. An appeal against the demand needs a deposit of fifty percent of the amount demanded, refunded or adjusted if it succeeds. Recovery runs by distraint and sale of movables, then by attachment of a bank account or of the property itself. Section 149(4) keeps a transferor who fails to give notice liable until the transfer is recorded, and on a death the heirs answer for the arrears whoever is named. Pay the year's tax before you apply, and if the demand is wrong, appeal within the thirty days.

What do heirs get wrong in a khata transfer after death?

Where these files actually stall, in my experience, is not at the portal. It is in the family, months earlier, when the sibling who lives in the flat says he will handle the khata and the others, relieved, let him. He applies in his own name with no objection letters, and a clerk records it. Years later the buyer's lawyer reads the family tree certificate against the khata, sees four heirs and one khatadar, and the sale waits for release deeds from people who by then have their own reasons to delay. What I tell families is to decide the ownership question first, on registered paper, and let the khata record the answer. The corporation's file is quick when the family's file is honest.

• Getting a succession certificate for the flat. It covers debts and securities and the court will not include immovable property.
• Recording the khata in one heir's name for convenience on an affidavit. The shares stay where Section 8 put them, and Section 149(5) lets the entry be reopened.
• Treating a no objection letter as a release. Only a registered deed extinguishes a share, under Section 17(1)(b) of the Registration Act, 1908.
• Leaving a predeceased sibling's children, a half-sibling or an estranged daughter off the family tree affidavit. They are Class I heirs, and a certificate on a false affidavit can be cancelled.
• Relying on the housing society's nomination. A nominee holds for the heirs, and our post on nominee versus legal heir explains why it settles nothing about ownership.

The four rules that keep a file out of trouble sit below.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.

Related Guides

These matters run through our property and real estate law practice and our wills, probate and succession practice in Bengaluru.

• E-Khata in Bangalore: How to Get and Transfer Your Khata
• Succession Certificate, Legal Heir Certificate or Probate: Which One Do You Need?
• Probate Is No Longer Mandatory in India: What Changed in December 2025