APPLICATION FOR A NON-ENCUMBRANCE CERTIFICATE

Application to the Sub-Registrar under Section 57 of the Registration Act, 1908 as applied in Punjab, for a search of the registers and indexes of the office and for a Non-Encumbrance Certificate of the result, read with the Punjab Transparency and Accountability in Delivery of Public Services Act, 2018

To

The Sub-Registrar / Joint Sub-Registrar
__________
__________
Tehsil __________, District __________, Punjab

Date: __________
Place: __________

Subject: Search of the registers and indexes of your office in respect of the __________ identified as __________, situated at __________, Tehsil __________, District __________, Punjab, for the period __________ to __________, and issue of a Non-Encumbrance Certificate.

What is asked for: __________.

Respected Sir / Madam,

1. Who is applying

I, __________, __________, resident of __________, apply for a search of the registers and indexes of your office, and for the certificate described in Part 5, in respect of the property described in Part 2 below and in the Schedule at Annexure A.

Contact: mobile __________.

Identity proof produced: __________.

I apply in the capacity of: __________.

2. The property to be searched

The description in the row marked Identified as is the description against which I ask that the search be run. If any part of it does not agree with the fard, the deed or the allotment letter produced with this application, please tell me at the counter before the search is run rather than after — a search run on a wrong number comes back nil, and a nil certificate reads as a clean one.

3. Period of search

Please search the registers of your office, including Book No. 1 and the index of properties maintained under Section 55 of the Registration Act, 1908, and certify every registered transaction affecting the property described above — sale, gift, exchange, mortgage, lease, agreement, release, relinquishment, partition, will registered in this office, attachment, or any other charge — for the period:

From __________ to __________, both dates inclusive, and, so far as your record permits, down to the date on which the certificate is issued.

Where the revenue estate has been through chakbandi under the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1948 at any time within the period, the killa and khasra numbers before repartition are not the numbers in use today, and entries from before repartition will have been indexed under the earlier numbers. So far as your record permits, please run the search under those earlier numbers as well, and record on the certificate the numbers actually searched.

If any part of the period lies in registers that have not been computerised, please treat this as an application for a manual search of those registers for that part, and inform me of the additional fee and the additional time required.

4. Purpose

The certificate is required for: __________.

5. What is requested

I request: __________.

I request that the certificate expressly record (a) the exact period searched, (b) the description, and the khewat, khatauni, khasra or killa numbers, under which the search was made, (c) the revenue estate, tehsil and district, and (d) the registers and indexes searched. Without those four particulars the certificate is of little use to a purchaser or to a lender, and cannot be checked against the fard.

If for any reason this office does not issue the certificate in the form asked for above, I request that I be told at the counter what it does issue on a search of this kind, and that the search be conducted and the result given to me in that form.

6. Fee

I undertake to pay on demand any shortfall in the fee, including any further per-year search charge, any copying or certification charge, and any charge for a manual search of registers that have not been computerised.

7. Declaration

1. The particulars stated in this application and in Annexure A are true to the best of my knowledge, information and belief.
2. I am seeking this certificate for a lawful purpose.
3. I understand that the certificate will disclose only such documents as have been registered and indexed in this office, for the period and under the description searched, and that it is not a certificate of title and not a guarantee of ownership or of freedom from all claims.
4. I understand that this certificate says nothing about the entries in the jamabandi, which are a separate record kept by the Halqa Patwari; that under Section 44 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 an entry in the record-of-rights is only presumed to be true until the contrary is proved; and that Section 45 of that Act leaves a person aggrieved by an entry to a suit for a declaratory decree.
5. I understand that an equitable mortgage created by deposit of title deeds under Section 58(f) of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 requires no registration, and that such a mortgage will not appear on this certificate even though it is fully enforceable.
6. I will accept the certificate in whichever form the result of the search and the practice of this office warrant.

8. Right to Service

Issue of a Non-Encumbrance Certificate is a notified service under the Punjab Transparency and Accountability in Delivery of Public Services Act, 2018, with a time limit of three days and the Sub-Registrar or Joint Sub-Registrar as the Designated Officer; two further days are allowed where the application has been submitted through a Sewa Kendra, Fard Kendra or Saanjh Kendra. The time runs from the receipt of a complete application.

I therefore request an acknowledgement bearing the application number and the date of receipt, so that the time limit runs from a recorded date. If any document is wanting, I request that I be told what it is at the counter and in writing on the acknowledgement, rather than after the limit has run. If the certificate is not issued within the limit, I will file a first appeal before the Sub-Divisional Magistrate and, if necessary, a second appeal before the Deputy Commissioner.

9. Prayer

I therefore request that the search be conducted for the period stated in Part 3, that the certificate asked for in Part 5 be issued to me at the earliest, and that an acknowledgement bearing the application number and the expected date of delivery be given to me at the counter.

10. Enclosures

1. Copy of the identity proof of the applicant (__________).
2. Copy of the latest registered deed for the property, if the applicant holds one.
3. Annexure A — Schedule of Property (two copies).

Please initial the enclosure list at the counter and return one copy to me with the acknowledgement. Where an item above is marked as being enclosed if available, or if held, and is not in the bundle, please strike it out rather than treat the application as incomplete. An applicant who applies as an intending purchaser, as a lender, as an advocate, or as a person interested under Section 57 of the Registration Act, 1908 holds no deed for this property and is not expected to produce one.

11. Signature

Yours faithfully,

_____________________________
__________
__________
Mobile: __________
Date: __________
Place: __________

ANNEXURE A — SCHEDULE OF PROPERTY

ALL THAT __________ situated at __________, Tehsil __________, District __________, Punjab, falling within the registration sub-district of the Sub-Registrar / Joint Sub-Registrar, __________, identified as __________, measuring __________.

_____________________________
__________

FOR OFFICE USE

NOTES FOR THE APPLICANT

This page is for you. Detach it before you file — the Sub-Registrar's office does not need it.

What a Non-Encumbrance Certificate actually is

It is a statement of what is in the registers of one office, and nothing more. The Sub-Registrar searches Book No. 1 and the index of properties maintained under Section 55 of the Registration Act, 1908 against the description you gave, for the period you asked for, and certifies what turned up. Section 57 of the same Act gives any person the right to that search — you do not have to own the land to ask for one.

If entries are found, the certificate lists them: document number and year, dates of execution and registration, the nature of the deed, the executant and the claimant, the extent and the consideration. If nothing is found, it certifies that the search disclosed no entry — the certificate people call a nil NEC.

Punjab keeps title evidence on two tracks. This reads one of them.

On one side sits the Sub-Registrar with the registers of deeds. On the other sits the Halqa Patwari with the jamabandi, the khatauni, the khasra girdawari and the mutation register, checked by the Field Kanungo and sanctioned by the Circle Revenue Officer. The two meet at one point only: when a deed is registered, the Sub-Registrar sends a Parcha Yadasht with a copy of the deed to the Tehsildar's office, the Office Kanungo distributes it to the Field Kanungo, and the intkal begins.

So an NEC and a fard answer different questions. The NEC says what has been registered. The fard says who is recorded as owner and cultivator today. Neither is a title deed: Section 44 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 makes a jamabandi entry presumed to be true only until the contrary is proved, and Section 45 sends the aggrieved owner to a declaratory suit. Take both, and read them against each other. A deed on the NEC with no matching intkal on the fard, or an intkal on the fard with no matching deed on the NEC, is the single most useful warning either document will ever give you.

Read a nil certificate as a question, not as comfort

A nil result means one of two things. Either genuinely nothing was registered, or the search was run against the wrong description. For land that has visibly changed hands, or a plot in a colony that was plainly sold off, nil is a warning. Check the numbers on the face of the certificate against your fard, your deed or your allotment letter, digit by digit, before you rely on it. And remember the honest nil: a plot held on a development authority allotment letter with no registered conveyance behind it will produce a blank certificate at the registering office while the authority's own file carries arrears, a mortgage permission and a transfer condition.

What it will NOT show you

This is the part that costs people money.

1. An equitable mortgage by deposit of title deeds. Section 58(f) of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 lets a valid mortgage be created in a notified town by handing the title deeds to a lender. Nothing is registered, and the certificate is silent while the mortgage is enforceable. A clean NEC is not proof that no bank holds the deeds. Ask the seller for the originals, inspect them, and where a loan is admitted, insist on the lender's no-dues and release.
2. Unregistered documents of every kind — an unregistered agreement to sell, an oral or family partition, a family arrangement on plain paper, an unregistered will, a lease of under one year, an unregistered development agreement.
3. Litigation, unless a notice of lis pendens has actually been registered. Run the property-under-litigation search on rcms.punjab.gov.in separately; the Revenue Courts Management System showed 478 active courts and 71,228 pending cases on 6 September 2026, and revenue litigation over a khewat will never surface on a registration search.
4. Dues and statutory charges — land revenue, municipal property tax, water and electricity arrears, development authority instalments and non-construction charges, income-tax and other attachments that were never registered, and dues recoverable as arrears of land revenue.
5. Documents registered at a different office, because the tehsil was reorganised, a sub-tehsil was created, or the deed was registered under the pre-consolidation killa number.
6. Indexing errors. The certificate is a reading of the index. If a clerk mis-keyed a khasra number in 1997, the entry exists and the certificate will not show it.
7. Anything about possession, girdawari, boundaries, encroachment, shamlat character, land use or building approvals. For possession the record is the khasra girdawari; for the boundary it is a nishandehi; for shamlat it is Section 2(g) of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 and a claim to the Collector under Section 11.

What period to ask for

• Thirty years is the standard, and it is not arbitrary: a document thirty years old produced from proper custody carries a presumption of genuineness under Section 92 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, and a thirty-year run gives you the whole chain rather than a slice.
• Better still, ask from the date of the earliest deed you know of, up to the day before you file, even if that is more than thirty years, and ask the office to bring the search down to the date of the certificate. Part 3 of the application already does that for you.
• Thirteen years is what many banks ask for on a housing loan. That is a lending formality, not a title check. If you are buying, take thirty.
• Take a fresh certificate dated within a week of registration. A mortgage registered last month will not be on a certificate from last year.
• Take another one three or four weeks after your own purchase, and take a fresh fard at the same time, to confirm both that your sale deed has been indexed and that the intkal has been entered. Easy Jamabandi, launched on 13 June 2025, promises mutation within thirty days of deed registration; the Right to Service figure for attestation of an uncontested mutation is forty-five days. Whichever governs, nobody will chase it for you.

What it costs

A departmental fee, not stamp duty. On the scale published for the service and checked on 6 September 2026: Rs 100 facilitation charge, Rs 2 application fee, Rs 20 for the current year, and Rs 10 for each earlier year searched. That is about Rs 242 for thirteen years and about Rs 412 for thirty. The portal computes the exact figure from the number of years when you apply online; take the figure it shows you and keep the receipt. A manual application may also carry a Rs 1.25 court-fee label. Certified copies of deeds are charged on top.

How long, and what you should walk away with

Three days under the Punjab Transparency and Accountability in Delivery of Public Services Act, 2018, with the Sub-Registrar or Joint Sub-Registrar as Designated Officer, and two days more if you filed through a Sewa Kendra, Fard Kendra or Saanjh Kendra. First appeal to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, second appeal to the Deputy Commissioner. Do not leave the counter without a dated acknowledgement bearing the application number: it is the only thing that proves when the clock started, and an appeal without it goes nowhere.

Check the period printed on the face of the certificate against the period you asked for. A certificate that quietly covers 2004 onwards when you asked for 1995 onwards is a common and expensive surprise, and it is the applicant who is expected to notice.

Small things that get applications returned at this counter

• The killa number written without the murabba, or the double oblique dropped.
• No hadbast number, where two villages in the district share a name.
• No pre-consolidation numbers given for an estate that has been through chakbandi.
• Filed at the office nearest home rather than the one for the tehsil or sub-tehsil in which the land lies.
• A flat applied for without the undivided share in the land.
• An authority plot applied for without the allotment letter, so the clerk has nothing to anchor the search to.
• The period written as thirty years instead of two actual dates, or a year count that does not agree with the two dates given.
• No copy of the fard, the allotment letter or any earlier deed in the bundle.

If the property is in Chandigarh

Do not file this application there. It is a Punjab application: addressed to a Punjab Sub-Registrar, priced on a Punjab per-year search scale and timed by a Punjab Right to Service limit. Chandigarh has none of those three. There is no Non-Encumbrance Certificate Issuance System, no departmental per-year search fee, and no Right to Service limit running against a non-encumbrance certificate — because Chandigarh is an administered estate. Nearly all urban land was sold or leased by Government under the Capital of Punjab (Development and Regulation) Act, 1952, and title runs through the Estate Officer's allotment file at the Town Hall, Sector 17-C, not through a revenue record. There is no fard, no Tehsildar mutation and no Fard Kendra for a sector property.

What Chandigarh does have is the Registration Act, 1908, which applies there, and a Sub-Registrar at the 30 Bays Building, Ground Floor, Sector 17 who keeps Book No. 1 and the index of properties maintained under Section 55, exactly as a registering officer in Ludhiana does. Section 57 therefore gives you the same right of inspection and of certified particulars at that counter. Use it. A registration search is one thing a Chandigarh purchaser was always entitled to, and skipping it because there is no NEC to ask for is how a registered mortgage gets missed. Apply there for a search of Book No. 1 and the indexes and for certified copies of the deeds, and ask that counter what form it gives the result in, on what fee, and in what time — it will not be the Punjab NEC and it carries no three-day clock.

Then do the four things that actually decide a Chandigarh title.

1. Run Know Your Property and Know Your Dues on estateoffice.chd.gov.in against the site number. Arrears of premium, ground rent and misuse charges are recoverable as arrears of land revenue under Section 8 of the 1952 Act, and they are the encumbrance that actually bites. Ground rent on a leasehold site runs at 2.5% of the premium for the first thirty-three years, 3.75% for the next and 5% thereafter under Rule 12 of the Chandigarh Estate Rules, 2007, and late payment carries a penalty of up to 100%.
2. Apply to the Estate Office for a No Dues Certificate — fifteen days under the Chandigarh Administration's Right to Service notification dated 30 March 2026, with the Assistant Estate Officer as Designated Officer, first appeal to the Estate Officer and second appeal to the Secretary Estate.
3. For a leasehold or concessionally allotted site, ask for the transfer NOC — fifty days under the same notification. Rule 7 of the Chandigarh Estate Rules, 2007 bars transfer for fifteen years from allotment and requires one-third of the unearned increase to be paid before the sale is registered. Adding or deleting the name of a parent, spouse, son or daughter with the Estate Officer's permission is not a transfer.
4. Take certified copies of the registered deeds from the Sub-Registrar at the 30 Bays Building, Ground Floor, Sector 17. Presentation is between 12.00 noon and 1.00 pm and registration between 3.00 pm and 5.00 pm, and documents are returned one week after presentation between 9.00 and 11.00 am.

Two more Chandigarh points a purchaser should know. Since 2025 mutation is triggered automatically from the Sub-Registrar to the Estate Office, so the affidavit-cum-indemnity pack must be right at registration — there is no later mutation application to fix it in. And the Estate Officer's public notice effective 10 February 2023, following the Supreme Court judgment of 10 January 2023 in Residents Welfare Association v. Union Territory of Chandigarh, stopped transfers and mutations of residential properties outside four permitted categories pending a Heritage Committee decision; whether that freeze is still running has to be confirmed at the Estate Office before any Chandigarh residential purchase involving unrelated co-owners is committed to. For a Chandigarh Housing Board flat the Board at 8 Jan Marg, Sector 9 runs its own regime under Regulation 16 of its 1979 Regulations — no dues in fifteen days, transfer NOC in twenty working days, and a five-year lock-in from physical possession. Chandigarh's own revenue villages and the lal dora and phirni areas are the exception to all of this: a fard and a Naib Tehsildar's report do feature in the registration checklist there.