How-to · Bihar · Encumbrance Certificate

How to Get an Encumbrance Certificate Online in Bihar

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

An encumbrance certificate (EC) tells you whether a property carries a registered charge, such as a mortgage, sale, gift or lien, over a given period. Before you buy a property or lend against it, the EC is how you check that the seller's title is clean of registered dues and transfers. In Bihar the registered-deed history sits with the Registration Department, and you search it online through the Bhumijankari portal, which lets you look up registered documents by registration office, circle, mauza or thana, and khata and plot number. The Bihar e-registration system (sometimes reached through the registration or IGRS portal) is the related channel for registering and viewing deeds. This page explains what an EC shows and what it cannot, how to run the Bhumijankari search for a Bihar property, how it links with the land records on Bihar Bhumi, and what to do when the search throws up a problem or the title is disputed, up to the civil and revenue courts. Bihar's registration portals change their addresses from time to time, so confirm the current link before you start. Last verified October 2026.

01What an encumbrance certificate shows

An EC is a record of the registered transactions on a specific property for a specific period. It typically shows:

• Registered sale deeds, so you can trace the chain of ownership.
• Registered mortgages and charges, which tell you if the property is security for a loan.
• Registered gifts, partitions, leases and other transfers.

A property that shows no registered charge for the relevant period is, on that record, free of registered encumbrances. That is exactly what a buyer and a lender want to see before money changes hands.

02What it does not show

An EC is powerful but partial. Read it with its limits in mind:

• Only registered transactions appear. An unregistered agreement, an oral family arrangement or an informal loan against the property will not show.
• Court cases and attachments may not appear on the EC at all. A property can be clean on the EC and still be the subject of a pending title suit, a partition dispute or an attachment order.
• Old records may exist only in physical registry volumes and may not be fully online.

03What you need before searching

• The registration office and circle (anchal) the property falls under.
• The mauza or thana name (the revenue village).
• The khata and plot (khesra) number, or the registered document details if you already have them.
• The period you want the search to cover (buyers usually search the past 12 to 30 years).

04The Bhumijankari search step by step

Bihar's registered-deed search runs on the Bhumijankari portal.

• Open the Bihar Bhumijankari portal (reached through the Registration Department / IGRS site).
• Choose the registered-document or encumbrance search option, and pick whether you are searching pre-computerisation or post-computerisation records, as the portal separates these by period.
• Select the registration office, circle, and mauza or thana, then enter the khata and plot number to pull the registered deeds for that property.
• Review the list of registered transactions. You can view and, where available, obtain a certified copy of a registered deed through the portal or the Sub-Registrar office.

05Cross-check with land records

The EC answers the registration question. For ownership and mutation, cross-check the Bihar land records:

• Bihar Bhumi shows the jamabandi (record of rights), khatiyan and mutation status, which tell you whose name the land stands in and whether a transfer has been mutated.
• Match the owner on the EC's latest sale deed with the name on the jamabandi. A mismatch, or a mutation not yet done, is a warning sign to investigate before you buy.

Together, the registered-deed search and the land records give you a far stronger picture than either alone.

06When the title is disputed

If the search or the land records throw up a problem, or a boundary or ownership fight is already on, the forum depends on the issue:

• Civil court. A title suit, a suit for possession, a partition suit, or a suit to cancel a fraudulent deed is filed and decided by the civil court. Keep the limitation period in mind; for a possession suit, see the limitation period for a property possession suit.
• Revenue court. Mutation, boundary and record-of-rights disputes are often dealt with by the revenue authorities (the Circle Officer and upward), with appeals through the revenue hierarchy.
• Both can run together, because the civil court decides title while the revenue side corrects the record once title is settled.

Before you lease or finance a property, a litigation check for a tenant or leasing deal adds the dispute layer the EC does not cover.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

An encumbrance search is a registration task. A title or boundary fight is litigation, and it is exactly the risk an EC does not show. If the property is the subject of a title suit, a partition dispute, a suit to cancel a deed, or a revenue appeal over mutation or boundary, that becomes a matter before the civil or revenue court that you have to follow across hearings and orders. You can create a FREE Claw account to track that matter on the court or forum that hears it. Claw covers 9,102 courts, benches and forums, including civil and revenue courts and the High Courts across Bihar, so there is a real tracking home for a property dispute; its judgment search spans 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, so you can read how similar title, possession and mutation disputes were decided. A party-name search can also reveal whether the seller is already in property litigation elsewhere, something a clean EC will never tell you. Results return in under 5 seconds, and Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. This is general information, not legal advice on any property.

08Sources and further reading

• Bihar Bhumijankari (registered-deed search): bhumijankari.bihar.gov.in
• Bihar e-registration (Registration Department): enibandhan.bihar.gov.in
• Bihar Bhumi (land records, jamabandi, mutation): biharbhumi.bihar.gov.in
• eCourts (civil case status): ecourts.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This page is general information for an Indian audience, not legal advice. Confirm the current Bihar registration and land-record portal links before relying on an exact address, as these change.

09Frequently asked questions