Convert Kattha/Katha to acres

A fraction, not a fixed area

The kattha is defined as one-twentieth of the local bigha almost everywhere it is used. That relationship is stable; the area is not, because the bigha it divides is a fact about a district rather than a measurement standard. When a reader asks how big a kattha is, the honest first answer is a question back: which district registered the plot?

The three values that account for most searches are the Nepali Terai kattha (338.63 m², one-twentieth of the 6,772.63 m² Nepali bigha), the Bihar kattha (about 126.44 m², from the 1,600-yard-class Bihar bigha commonly recorded as 1,361.25 ft²), and the Bengal kattha of 720 ft² (66.89 m²) used across West Bengal and Bangladesh. They differ by a factor of five from end to end.

Why land dealers quote in kattha at all

A bigha is too coarse for urban and peri-urban transactions. In Kathmandu's Terai corridor, in Patna and across greater Dhaka, residential plots are traded in whole kattha because the unit sits close to the size of a family building plot — roughly the area of a small suburban lot in Bengal, roughly three times that in the Nepali Terai.

Because pricing is per kattha, an error in the assumed bigha propagates directly into money rather than into a technical footnote. Cross-border buyers moving between Bangladeshi, Bihari and Nepali markets are the group most exposed, and the mistake is almost never caught by the arithmetic — every figure looks plausible on its own.

Reading kattha in a document

Modern digitised records in Nepal and Bangladesh usually print the metric area beside the traditional figure. Where both exist, the metric one is the operative area for registration, mutation and tax, and the kattha figure is what the parties negotiate in. Record both in any conversion you publish or file.

Older deeds may express the same plot as bigha-kattha-dhur in a three-part figure, read positionally rather than decimally: "1-10-5" means one bigha, ten kattha and five dhur, not 1.105 bigha. Treating such a string as a decimal is one of the more expensive transcription errors in the region.

Cross-checking a converted kattha figure

The only reliable internal check is the parent area. Sum the kattha in a holding, convert with the district value, and compare against the registered metric area of the parent plot before subdivision. If the totals disagree by a clean multiple — five, two-and-a-half, or twenty — the wrong bigha variant is in play, not a rounding fault.

When no metric figure exists at all, source the conversion from the revenue manual in force at the date of the record rather than the current one. Several jurisdictions revised their standard bigha during metrication, so today's value can be the wrong answer for a nineteenth-century settlement entry.

A second, weaker check is the built form on the ground. A Bengal kattha of 720 square feet holds a narrow town house and little else; a Nepali Terai kattha of 338 square metres comfortably holds a detached house with a garden and vehicle access. If a listing describes a garden, parking and outbuildings on "one kattha", the Bengal value is almost certainly not the one intended, and the description has caught an error the numbers alone would have hidden.

Where a transaction spans several plots, convert each plot with its own district value and sum afterwards rather than converting the summed traditional figure. Holdings assembled over decades frequently mix records written under different standards, and a single blanket factor applied to the total silently averages two incompatible units into a number that matches neither deed.

Common mistakes to avoid

• A Nepali Terai kattha (338.63 m²) is about five times a Bengal kattha (66.89 m²) — never carry a figure across the border unconverted.
• Bigha-kattha-dhur strings such as "1-10-5" are positional, not decimal; each level is a twentieth of the one above.
• Quoted price "per kattha" only means something once the district bigha is known; confirm it before comparing two listings.

Questions people ask about the Kattha/Katha

How many kattha are in a bigha?

Twenty, in Nepal, Bihar and Bengal alike. The count is stable across jurisdictions even though the resulting area is not, because each kattha is one-twentieth of the local bigha.

Is a kattha in Nepal the same as a kattha in Bangladesh?

No. The Nepali Terai kattha is 338.63 m² and the Bengal kattha used in Bangladesh and West Bengal is 66.89 m² (720 ft²). The Bihar kattha sits between them at roughly 126.44 m².

What comes below a kattha?

The dhur — twenty dhur to one kattha. In Nepal that makes a dhur about 16.93 m²; in Bengal practice it is about 3.34 m².