Biswa: the piece a bigha gets cut into
Biswa exists so a bigha can be split into workable shares. Twenty biswa make one bigha, which means the biswa quietly inherits every regional difference the bigha has.
If the local bigha is 27,000 sq ft, one biswa is about 1,350 sq ft, or 150 sq. yd. If you are in a district where the bigha is 9,075 sq ft, the same word now means roughly 454 sq ft. Nobody announces the change, so it is worth asking directly how many biswa the seller counts to a bigha and what that bigha measures.
Biswa turns up most often in inheritance splits, in narrow strips sold along a village road, and in older revenue papers where a holding was divided among brothers. Below it sits the biswansi, a twentieth of a biswa, which you will still see written in jamabandi entries even though almost nobody negotiates in it.
Treat biswa as conversation, not contract. It is a perfectly good way to describe a share of family land, but the sale deed should carry square yards and square feet, with the survey or khasra number attached.
Typically used for: Family partitions, small strip sales and village level transactions.
Where you'll hear it: Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab
Also called: Bisva, and its own sub unit biswansi
Quick facts
- Typical value in Haryana and UP
- 1,350 sq ft
- In one bigha
- 20 biswa
- In square yards
- 150 sq. yd.
- Sub unit
- 20 biswansi = 1 biswa
How biswa changes from place to place
The word stays the same, the ground does not. Here is what one biswa works out to in the regions where people use it, so you know exactly what you are being quoted.
| Region or usage | Local term | Square feet | Square yards | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haryana | Biswa | 1,361 sq ft | 151.22 sq. yd. | A twentieth of the 27,225 sq ft bigha, close to 151 sq. yd. |
| Western Uttar Pradesh | Biswa | 1,350 sq ft | 150 sq. yd. | The value most NCR side buyers will meet, exactly 150 sq. yd. |
| Uttarakhand | Biswa | 340 sq ft | 37.78 sq. yd. | Follows the small hill bigha, so plan for roughly 38 sq. yd. |
| Himachal Pradesh | Biswa | 1,361 sq ft | 151.22 sq. yd. | Widely used in property listings, often alongside bigha rather than sq ft. |
| Punjab | Biswa | 1,361 sq ft | 151.22 sq. yd. | Less common than kanal and marla, but still heard in older records. |
If a seller quotes you in biswa, ask which version they mean before you talk price, then get the same area written in square yards and square feet. That is the figure the sale deed, the registry and any bank valuation will go by.
One Biswa in every other unit
Land unit converter
Convert between bigha, biswa, katha, guntha, kanal, marla, cent, acre, hectare, square yards (gaj) and square feet.
What locals would call this area
The same word can mean very different ground depending on where you are standing. Here is your 1,350 sq ft read back in the terms people actually use, state by state.
| Region | Local term | Your area |
|---|---|---|
| Haryana (Gurugram, Sohna, Naugaon) | Bigha | 0.0496 bigha |
| Haryana and Punjab | Kanal | 0.2479 kanal |
| Haryana and Punjab | Marla | 4.9587 marla |
| Rajasthan (Alwar, Jaipur) | Pucca bigha | 0.0496 pucca bigha |
| Rajasthan villages | Kachcha bigha | 0.1488 kachcha bigha |
| Western Uttar Pradesh | Bigha | 0.05 bigha |
| Uttar Pradesh and Haryana | Biswa | 1 biswa |
| Gujarat | Vigha | 0.0775 vigha |
| Gujarat and Maharashtra | Guntha | 1.2397 guntha |
| Madhya Pradesh | Bigha | 0.1125 bigha |
| Bihar and Jharkhand | Katha | 0.9919 katha |
| West Bengal | Cottah (katha) | 1.875 cottah (katha) |
| Assam | Katha | 0.4688 katha |
| Uttarakhand hills | Bigha | 0.1984 bigha |
| Tamil Nadu and Kerala | Cent | 3.0992 cent |
| Chennai | Ground | 0.5625 ground |
| Andhra Pradesh and Telangana | Ankanam | 18.75 ankanam |
| Delhi NCR | Gaj (square yard) | 150 gaj (square yard) |
Local values are the ones commonly used in each area. Districts and villages sometimes work with their own figures, so always ask the seller which version they mean and get the area written in square yards on paper.
PaperworkQuestions people ask
Why is one bigha not the same everywhere?+
Because bigha was never standardised. It grew out of local practice, so each region settled on its own size. A pucca bigha in Rajasthan is about 27,225 sq ft, a kachcha bigha in the same state is roughly 9,075 sq ft, Gujarat's vigha is 17,424 sq ft, Madhya Pradesh works with about 12,000 sq ft, and the hill districts of Uttarakhand use a bigha closer to 6,804 sq ft. Always ask which bigha is being quoted, then get the area restated in square yards.
What is the difference between a bigha, a biswa and a katha?+
They are the same idea in different languages. A bigha is the parent unit, and it gets divided into twenty parts. In Haryana and Uttar Pradesh those parts are called biswa, and in Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal they are called katha. Since the parent bigha varies, so do biswa and katha, which is why a Bihar katha is about 1,361 sq ft while a Bengal cottah is only 720 sq ft.
Which local units are used around Sohna, Naugaon and Alwar?+
On the Haryana side you will hear bigha, biswa, kanal and marla, with kanal and marla appearing in the jamabandi. On the Alwar side of Rajasthan it is mostly pucca and kachcha bigha. Sale deeds through the whole belt are written in square yards, which is the unit we quote in.
How many guntha, kanal, marla or cent make an acre?+
Forty guntha, eight kanal, 160 marla or 100 cent. All four are standardised, so those numbers hold wherever you are. Bigha is the odd one out, and the answer there depends entirely on the state.
Why do land records use hectares when nobody speaks in hectares?+
Revenue departments moved to metric for record keeping, so jamabandi, khasra and khatian extracts carry hectares and ares. Everyday conversation stayed with the traditional units. You need both: hectares to read your papers and square yards to sign your deed.
What is the difference between vigha and bigha?+
The same unit with different spellings. Vigha is the Gujarati form, bigha the North Indian one. A Gujarat vigha is usually taken as 17,424 sq ft, which is not what a Haryana bigha means, so the spelling difference hides a real size difference.
Which unit should I use when comparing two pieces of land?+
Square feet, every time. Convert both offers to a price per square foot and the comparison becomes honest in seconds. Headline prices per bigha or per katha hide too much because the units themselves are not fixed.
How big is a 1,500 sq. yd. farm land in local terms?+
A 1,500 sq. yd. farm land is 13,500 sq ft. That is about 2.5 kanal or 50 marla in Haryana language, roughly 0.5 pucca bigha in Alwar, about 0.77 vigha in Gujarat terms, 12.4 guntha, just under 10 katha in Bihar, 31 cent in the south, or 0.31 acre.
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