Encumbrance Certificate in Bihar (Bhumijankari Portal, Registration Department)

What is an encumbrance certificate in Bihar?

An encumbrance certificate in Bihar is a statement of the deeds registered against a property during a stated period, issued by the Registration wing of the Department of Prohibition, Excise and Registration and served online through the Bhumijankari portal, bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in. An encumbrance is any registered claim that limits an owner's freedom to sell clean, a bank mortgage, a court attachment, a registered lease, a gift, a partition, a release or an earlier sale.

Bihar runs two separate systems that buyers often confuse:

• Bhumijankari, run by the Registration wing, holds registered deeds, who sold what to whom, and what charges were created. This is the system an encumbrance search runs on.
• Bihar Bhumi (biharbhumi.bihar.gov.in), run by the Revenue and Land Reforms department, holds jamabandi, khatiyan, mutation (dakhil kharij) and land possession certificates. This is ownership and possession, not encumbrance.

A complete Bihar title check needs both. A property can be free of registered encumbrance and still have a mutation dispute, and vice versa.

Bihar does not issue a numbered "Form 15" or "Form 16". Those forms belong to Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In Bihar, ask the Sub-Registrar for an encumbrance certificate or a search report for a stated number of years.

Who can apply for an encumbrance certificate in Bihar?

You can apply if:

• You are the owner of the plot, house, flat or agricultural land.
• You are a prospective buyer doing due diligence before paying advance money.
• You are a bank, housing finance company or advocate verifying title for a loan, a sale or litigation.
• You are a legal heir establishing what a deceased relative owned and what charges sit on it.
• You are any member of the public. The register of registered documents is public under the Registration Act, 1908, so Bihar asks for no owner consent, no power of attorney and no stated reason.

An encumbrance certificate is a property record, not a welfare benefit. There is no income limit, no caste or category condition, and no requirement that the applicant live in Bihar.

You cannot apply: or will get a useless result, if:

• You cannot give the mauza and khesra number. Bihar's registration index is built on mauza, thana number, khata and khesra. A village name and a landmark are not enough.
• You name the wrong registration office. Bihar registers deeds office by office, and a search at the wrong office returns nothing.
• You expect unregistered dealings to appear. An oral family partition, an unregistered agreement, a pending title suit or a personal loan will not show.
• You expect online data to cover every old year. Bhumijankari's coverage of the older pre-computerisation registers depends on scanning, and those years may need a manual search.
• You treat a portal screenshot as a certificate. It is not certified and will be refused by a lender.

What documents and details are required?

How to apply for an encumbrance certificate in Bihar online

1. Open bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in, the Registration wing's portal for registered deed data.
2. Register as a citizen with your mobile number and email address, then log in. The same login carries your requests, payments and downloads.
3. Use the free deed search first. Look up the registered deed details for the property by district, registration office, mauza and khesra, and see what is already visible before you pay for anything.
4. Open the e-services or encumbrance request section and choose the encumbrance certificate or certified copy service.
5. Enter the property details: district, registration office, mauza with thana number, khata and khesra — exactly as they appear on the deed, and state the exact period to be searched with from and to dates.
6. Pay the fee shown on the portal payment screen by net banking, card or UPI, and save the receipt with its acknowledgement number.
7. Track the request in your account and download the certificate or certified copy when it is issued, or collect it from the Sub-Registrar office if the portal directs you to.

How to get an encumbrance certificate offline in Bihar

1. Go to the Sub-Registrar or District Sub-Registrar office that has registration jurisdiction over the property. Confirm the office first, a plot near a sub-divisional boundary is often registered elsewhere than the applicant assumes.
2. Submit a written application describing the property by mauza, thana number, khata and khesra, with the circle and district, and stating the exact period to be searched.
3. Attach your identity proof and any copy of an earlier deed you hold, which helps the clerk locate the entry.
4. Pay the notified fee at the counter and take the printed receipt with the acknowledgement number.
5. Allow time for a manual search of the older registers. Pre-computerisation years are searched by hand from bound volumes, which is why a 30-year report takes longer than a 12-year one.
6. Collect the signed certificate or search report on the date given, quoting the acknowledgement number.

How do I check my application status in Bihar?

• Online: log in to your Bhumijankari account and open the request history for the encumbrance or certified copy request.
• In person: at the Sub-Registrar counter, quoting the acknowledgement number on your receipt.
• Escalation: the Sub-Registrar, then the District Sub-Registrar, then the Inspector General of Registration in the Department of Prohibition, Excise and Registration.

Portal and payment problems are raised through the support details published on bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in. Keep the transaction reference for any payment that failed midway, refunds and re-submissions both need it.

How long is a Bihar encumbrance certificate valid?

An encumbrance certificate has no expiry date, but it is only accurate up to the last date of the period it covers. A mortgage registered the day after your period ends will not appear in it.

Bihar banks and buyers' advocates therefore ask for a recently issued certificate, usually within weeks of the transaction, and careful buyers run a second short search immediately before the sale deed is registered to catch anything filed in the gap. There is no renewal, you apply again for the fresh period only, which costs far less than repeating the whole 30 years.

Why do Bihar encumbrance searches go wrong?

• Wrong khesra number, or a khesra written from the khatiyan when the deed used a subdivided number.
• Mauza name given without the thana number. Bihar has many mauzas sharing a name; the thana number is what separates them.
• Wrong registration office selected, giving a nil result that the applicant misreads as a clean title.
• Confusing Bihar Bhumi with Bhumijankari, a clean jamabandi says nothing about a registered mortgage.
• Assuming the online data reaches back 30 years. Older registers may not be digitised for every office.
• Ignoring a mortgage with no release entry. A loan repaid in life but never released on the register still shows as a live charge.
• Not checking dakhil kharij. An unmutated sale in the chain is a common Bihar problem that an encumbrance certificate will not reveal.

What does it cost, and what should you refuse to pay?

An encumbrance certificate in Bihar costs only the fee displayed on the Bhumijankari payment screen, or the notified fee charged at the Sub-Registrar counter against a printed receipt. The amount rises with the number of years searched, which is why a 30-year search costs more than a 12-year one. Those are the only legitimate charges.

Deed writers and agents outside Bihar registry offices offer to "get the encumbrance done quickly" for a few thousand rupees. They are filling the same form on the same portal. There is no paid priority queue in the Registration Department, and no officer can add or delete an entry in the register. Register on bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in yourself, run the free deed search before paying anything, pay only the portal or counter rate, never share your login password or Aadhaar OTP with an agent, and never accept a certificate that did not come from the portal or the Sub-Registrar's counter.

Grievance and escalation route

• Portal: bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in, for deed search, online requests and payments
• Local level: the Sub-Registrar of the office holding the records
• District level: the District Sub-Registrar
• State level: the Inspector General of Registration, Department of Prohibition, Excise and Registration, Government of Bihar, Patna
• Related records: biharbhumi.bihar.gov.in for jamabandi, khatiyan and dakhil kharij

Carry the acknowledgement number to any of these; without it no office can trace the request.

Common reasons for rejection

Bihar's Sub-Registrar offices and the Bhumijankari helpdesk turn back or hold up a number of encumbrance requests before a search is even run. Most of these are not about what the search finds, they are about the application itself failing to meet the office's basic requirements. The fixes are specific to each cause.

Incomplete property description on the application form

• What happens: a written application or online form that gives only the mauza name, or only the khata number, without the thana number and khesra, is returned for correction rather than processed.
• Fix: copy the mauza, thana number, khata and khesra straight off the sale deed or the jamabandi panji before filling the form, do not rely on memory or a verbal description of the plot.

Property falls outside the office's registration jurisdiction

• What happens: an application submitted at a Sub-Registrar office that does not hold the registration records for that mauza is rejected at the counter, or accepted by mistake and returned weeks later with no result.
• Fix: confirm which Sub-Registrar or District Sub-Registrar office covers the mauza before applying, particularly for plots near a sub-division or block boundary where jurisdiction commonly changes.

Search period stated wrongly or left open-ended

• What happens: a request without clear from and to dates, or with a period that conflicts with the deed years quoted, is held back for clarification instead of run.
• Fix: state the exact search period the request is meant to cover, matched to what the bank or buyer actually needs (commonly 12 to 13 years for a loan, up to 30 years for an outright purchase).

Fee not paid, or paid without linking the payment to the request

• What happens: on the Bhumijankari portal, a request left in draft after an incomplete or failed online payment does not move forward, and the office cannot match a counter payment to a written application if the receipt number is not quoted on it.
• Fix: complete the payment in the same session as the online request and note the transaction reference, or write the counter receipt number on the copy of the written application you keep.

Identity proof missing or the name not matching the deed

• What happens: an application from someone whose name is spelled differently from the deed, or who submits no identity proof at all, is queried before the office acts on it, since the register has to record who searched it.
• Fix: attach a standard identity document and use the same name spelling that appears on the sale deed or jamabandi entry where the applicant is also the recorded owner.

Signature or application not matching the format the office expects

• What happens: for the offline route, a plain letter without the property particulars set out clearly, or without a signature, is sent back for resubmission rather than logged.
• Fix: set out mauza, thana number, khata, khesra, circle, district and the search period as separate clearly labelled lines in the written application, and sign it.

None of these are refusals of the property's title itself. Bihar's Registration Department does not reject an encumbrance request because a mortgage or charge shows up in the result, an encumbrance certificate simply reports what is on the register. A rejection at this stage is almost always a paperwork or jurisdiction problem that a corrected, resubmitted application clears.