Old survey number to new survey number

Why the number on your deed no longer exists

Tamil Nadu has renumbered its land twice, for two different reasons, and a deed written before either event cites a number that no clerk today will recognise. Knowing which of the two happened to your land is what tells you where the answer is kept.

Villages: the Updating Registry resurvey

From 1 June 1979 the state re-measured its ryotwari villages under the Updating Registry scheme, carrying out sub-divisions that had been pending for decades and issuing fresh A-registers and field measurement sketches. Where that happened the numbering was rebuilt rather than extended, so the old and the new numbers need not resemble each other at all. In one Tiruppur village the current survey numbers run from 1 to about 105 while the numbers they replaced sit in the 1300s: survey 10 today carries 1377 as its earlier number. Nothing in "10" hints at "1377", which is exactly why the register has to be read rather than reasoned about.

Towns: the town survey

When a town was brought under town survey, every parcel received a town survey (T.S.) number that is unique only inside its ward and block, and the revenue survey (R.S.) number it replaced stopped being used day to day. The town survey land register records that earlier number against each parcel in a field of its own, the "old survey number and letter". That field is filled on 93.2% of town survey parcels, and it is the whole basis of the answer this page gives.

One old field rarely became one new parcel

The commonest surprise is that a single old number answers for several parcels. A field that was one holding in 1975 may be six plots today, and the register records the same earlier number against each of them, usually with a part marker: an entry reading 59/10PT, 56/1PT, 59/1PT is one parcel assembled from parts of three different old fields. Because one register entry can name several old numbers at once, an equality test on that field would miss most of them, so every individual number is indexed separately. That is why the searchable index holds about 4.6 million old numbers for a smaller number of register entries.

A part marker is a warning as much as a label. It tells you your old number covers more ground than the parcel in front of you, so the deed schedule (its boundaries and measured extent) and the field measurement sketch are what identify which piece is yours. This page gets you to the right set of parcels; those two documents settle which one.

When the register gives nothing back

A blank is not evidence that the land was never renumbered, and this page never says it was. The old-number field is empty on a share of town entries, and a search can also miss because the number was typed differently from the way the register prints it. Try it without a part marker, try the parent number without its sub-division letter, and check the spelling of the place. If it still answers nothing, the next sources are the district survey office's correlation statement, which exists precisely to map old numbers to new ones, and the margin of the field measurement sketch, which usually carries the earlier number.

What to do with the answer

Carry both numbers. An encumbrance certificate search, an older sale deed, a partition among family members or a court paper from before the resurvey is indexed under the old number, so a search run only on your current number can miss the earlier chain of title entirely. Once you have the current parcel from this page, the reverse lookup on the sibling page gives you every earlier number recorded against it, including the several that a single entry often holds.